28
We have, to be sure, heard Aristotimus Cf. 972 a supra. Valentine Rose, curiously enough, emended to Aristotle (see Historia Animal. ix. 6, 612 b 4) and included this passage in Frag. 342. See further Mair on Oppian, Hal. ii. 226. telling us about the hedgehog’s foreknowledge of the winds; and our friend also admired the V-shaped flight of cranes. Cf. 967 b supra. I can produce no hedgehog of Cyzicus or Byzantium,Perhaps he is learnedly confuting Aristotimus (972 a supra) by drawing on Aristotle. but instead the whole body of sea-hedgehogs, i.e. the sea-urchin, regarded by the ancients as a sort of marine counterpart of the hedgehog because of the similar spines. which, when they perceive that storm and surf are coming, ballast themselves with little stones Cf. 967 b supra, of bees. in order that they may not be capsized by reason of their lightness or be swept away by the swell, but may remain fixed in position through the weight of their little rocks.
28
Again, the cranes’ change of flight against the wind Cf. 967 b supra. is not merely the action of one species: all fish generally have the same notion and always swim against wave and current, taking care that a blast from the rear does not fold back their scales and expose and roughen their bodies. For this reason they always present the prow of their bodies to the waves, for in that way head first they cleave the sea, which depresses their gills and, flowing smoothly over the surface, keeps down, instead of ruffling up, the bristling skin. Now this, as I have said, is common to all fish except the sturgeon,Probably usually the common sturgeon, Acipenser sturio: see Thompson, Glossary, pp. 62 f.; Aelian, De Natura Animal. viii. 28, speaks of it as a rare and sacred fish; see 981 d infra. Cf. Milton’s Ellops drear (P.L. x. 525). which, they say, swims with wind and tide and does not fear the harrowing of its scales since the overlaps are not in the direction of the tail.
