29
The tunny Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. ix. 42; Aristotle, Historia Animal. viii. 13 (598 b 25 f.). is so sensitive to equinox and solstice that it teaches even men themselves without the need of astronomical tables; for wherever it may be when the winter solstice overtakes it, in that same place it stands and stays until the equinox. As for that clever device of the crane,See 967 c supra. the grasping of the stone by night so that if it falls, she may awake from sleep - how much cleverer, my friend, is the artifice of the dolphin, for whom it is illicit to stand still or to cease from motion.Reiske may have been right in suspecting a trimeter of unknown origin in these words. For its nature is to be ever active Cf. Aelian, De Natura Animal. xi. 22. The dolphin even nurses its young while in motion; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xi. 235; and cf. Aristotle, Historia Animal. ii. 13 (504 b 21 ff.).: the termination of its life and its movement is one and the same. When it needs sleep, it rises to the surface of the sea and allows itself to sink deeper and deeper on its back, lulled to rest by the swinging motion of the ground swellAs it were, the cradle of the deep. until it touches the bottom. Thus roused, it goes whizzing up, and when it reaches the surface, again goes slack, devising for itself a kind of rest combined with motion.But see Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 210, where it is reported that dolphins are actually heard snoring. And they say that tunnies do the same thing for the same reason.
