Swine are either cloven-footed or
uncloven-footed; for there are in Illyria and in Paeonia and elsewhere
solid-hooved swine. The cloven-footed animals have two clefts
behind; in the solid-hooved this part is continuous and undivided.
Furthermore, of animals some are horned, and some are not so.
The great majority of the horned animals are cloven-footed, as the ox,
the stag, the goat; and a solid-hooved animal with a pair of horns has
never yet been met with. But a few animals are known to be
singled-horned and single-hooved, as the Indian ass; and one, to wit
the oryx, is single horned and cloven-hooved.
Of all solid-hooved animals the Indian ass alone has an astragalus
or huckle-bone; for the pig, as was said above, is either solid-hooved
or cloven-footed, and consequently has no well-formed huckle-bone.
Of the cloven footed many are provided with a huckle-bone. Of the
many-fingered or many-toed, no single one has been observed to have
a huckle-bone, none of the others any more than man. The lynx,
however, has something like a hemiastragal, and the lion something
resembling the sculptor's 'labyrinth'. All the animals that have a
huckle-bone have it in the hinder legs.
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