Aristotle, Second Part of THE HISTORY OF ANIMALS Complete

Translated by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson.

Aristotle Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristotle in Print

II: 128 pages - You are on Page 42

Part 34

With regard to serpents or snakes, the viper is externally viviparous, having been previously oviparous internally. The egg, as with the egg of fishes, is uniform in colour and soft-skinned. The young serpent grows on the surface of the egg, and, like the young of fishes, has no shell-like envelopment. The young of the viper is born inside a membrane that bursts from off the young creature in three days; and at times the young viper eats its way out from the inside of the egg. The mother viper brings forth all its young in one day, twenty in number, and one at a time. The other serpents are externally oviparous, and their eggs are strung on to one another like a lady's necklace; after the dam has laid her eggs in the ground she broods over them, and hatches the eggs in the following year.

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