If a full-grown bull be mutilated,
he can still to all appearance unite sexually with the cow. The
ovaries of sows are excised with the view of quenching in them
sexual appetites and of stimulating growth in size and fatness. The
sow has first to be kept two days without food, and, after being
hung up by the hind legs, it is operated on; they cut the lower belly,
about the place where the boars have their testicles, for it is
there that the ovary grows, adhering to the two divisions (or horns)
of the womb; they cut off a little piece and stitch up the incision.
Female camels are mutilated when they are wanted for war purposes, and
are mutilated to prevent their being got with young. Some of the
inhabitants of Upper Asia have as many as three thousand camels:
when they run, they run, in consequence of the length of their stride,
much quicker than the horses of Nisaea. As a general rule, mutilated
animals grow to a greater length than the unmutilated.
All animals that ruminate derive profit and pleasure from the
process of rumination, as they do from the process of eating. It is
the animals that lack the upper teeth that ruminate, such as kine,
sheep, and goats.
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