Which are the most crafty, water-animals or those creatures that breed upon the land? (26-30)

Now for the extraordinary subtlety of fish in hunting and catching their own prey, we shall meet with several examples of it in several fish. Particularly the starfish, understanding his own nature to be such that whatever he touches dissolves and liquefies, readily offers his body, and permits himself to be touched by all that come near him.

You know yourself the property of the torpedo or cramp fish which not only benumbs all those that touch it, but also strikes a numbness through the very net into the hands of them that go about to take him. And some that have had greater experience of this fish report that, if it happen to fall alive upon the land, they that pour water upon it shall presently perceive a numbness seizing upon their hands and stupefying their feeling, through the water affected with the quality of the fish. And therefore, having an innate sense of this faculty, it never makes any resistance against any thing, nor ever is it in danger. Only swimming circularly about his prey, he shoots forth the effluviums of his nature like so many darts, and first infects the water, then the fish through the water, which is neither able to defend itself nor to escape, being (as it were) held in chains and frozen up.

The fish called the fisherman is well known to many, who has his name given him from his manner of catching fish; whose art, as Aristotle writes, the cuttle-fish makes use of, for he lets down, like a line, a certain curl which Nature has given him, so ordered as to let it run out at length or draw it to him again, as he sees occasion. This, when he sees any of the lesser fish approach, he offers them to bite, and then by degrees pulls the curl nearer and nearer by virtue of the bait, till he has drawn his prey within the reach of his mouth. And as for the polypus’s changing his color, Pindar has made it famous in these words:

In any city may that man expose

His safety, who well knows

Like sea-bred polypus to range,

And vary color upon every change.

In like manner Theognis:

Change manners with thy friends, observing thus

The many-colored, cunning polypus;

Who let him stick to whatsoever rock,

Of the same color does his body look.

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It is true the chameleon changes color, not out of any design or to conceal himself, but out of fear, being naturally timorous and trembling at every noise he hears. And this is occasioned by the extraordinary abundance of breath which he enjoys, as Theophrastus affirms. For the whole body of this creature wants but little of being nothing else but lungs; which demonstrates him to be full of spirits, and consequently apt to change. But this same change of the polypus is no product of any affection of the mind, but a kind of action. For he changes on purpose, making use of this artifice to escape what he fears, and to get the food which he lives by. For by fraud, those things that he will take never avoid him, and those things he will escape pass him by without taking any notice of him. For that he devours his own claws is an untruth, but that he is afraid of the lamprey and conger is certain; for by these he is ill treated, not being able to return them any injury, by reason of their being so slippery. Though on the other side the crawfish, having once got them within his claws, holds them with ease. For slenderness affords no help against roughness; but when the polypus comes to thrust his horns into the body of the crawfish, then also the crawfish dies. And this same vicissitude of avoiding and pursuing one another has Nature infused into them on purpose to exercise their subtlety and understanding.

Moreover, the tunny is so sensible of the equinoxes and solstices, that he teaches even men themselves without the help of any astrological table. For where the winter solstice overtakes him, there he remains till the vernal equinox.

As for that same artifice of the cranes, that keep themselves waking by clutching a stone in their claws, how much more cunningly done is that of the dolphin, for whom it is not lawful to stand still or to be out of motion. For it is the nature of the dolphins to be always in motion; so that, when they cease to move, they also cease to live. And therefore when sleep seizes them, they raise their bodies to the superficies of the sea, and so sinking down again with their bellies upward, are carried along with the tide till they touch again the shore. Wakened in that manner, with an impetuous noise they mount upward again, designing thus a kind of rest still intermixed with motion. And the same thing is reported of the tunnies for the same reason.

Having thus concluded their mathematical foreknowledge of the mutations of the sun, of which Aristotle gives testimony, let me now relate their skill in arithmetic; but first of all, their knowledge in optics, of which Aeschylus seems not to have been altogether ignorant. For these are his words:

Casting a squint-eye like the tunny.

For tunnies seem to be dim-sighted of one eye. And therefore, when they enter the Euxine Sea, they coast along the land on the right side, and contrariwise when they come forth; prudently committing the care of their bodies to the best eye.

But wanting arithmetic in order to the preservation of mutual love and society one with another, they arrive in such a manner to the perfection of that science, that, in regard they are extremely desirous to enjoy the society of each other, they always make up their whole fry into the form of a cube, and make a solid of the whole number consisting of six equal planes; and then they swim in such order as to present an equal front in each direction. So then, if the observer of the tunnies does but exactly take the number of the side that he sees, he knows the whole number of the shoal; well knowing that the depth is equal to the breadth and length.