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. Now inasmuch
as fishes are made swimming they have fins, and as they are not made
for walking they are without feet; for feet are attached to the body
that they may be of use in progression on land. Moreover, fishes
cannot have feet, or any other similar limbs, as well as four fins;
for they are essentially sanguineous animals. The Cordylus, though
it has gills, has feet, for it has no fins but merely has its tail
flattened out and loose in texture.
Fishes, unless, like the Batos and the Trygon, they are broad and
flat, have four fins, two on the upper and two on the under side of
the body; and no fish ever has more than these. For, if it had, it
would be a bloodless animal.
The upper pair of fins is present in nearly all fishes, but not so
the under pair; for these are wanting in some of those fishes that
have long thick bodies, such as the eel, the conger, and a certain
kind of Cestreus that is found in the lake at Siphae. When the body is
still more elongated, and resembles that of a serpent rather than that
of a fish, as is the case in the Smuraena, there are absolutely no
fins at all; and locomotion is effected by the flexures of the body,
the water being put to the same use by these fishes as is the ground
by serpents. For serpents swim in water exactly in the same way as
they glide on the ground. The reason for these serpent-like fishes
being without fins is the same as that which causes serpents to be
without feet; and what this is has been already stated in the
dissertations on the Progression and the Motion of Animals
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