Amongst the animals, wild beasts, such as lions, have their biggest
muscles about the shoulders, thighs, and legs; and therefore these
animals are nimble, brisk, nervous, and ready to rush forward.
Their jaw-bones are prodigiously large, in proportion to the rest of
their bodies. They have teeth and claws, which serve them, as
terrible weapons, to tear in pieces and devour other animals. For
the same reason, birds of prey, such as eagles, have a beak and
pounces that pierce everything. The muscles of their pinions are
extreme large and brawny, that their wings may have a stronger and
more rapid motion: and so those creatures, though somewhat heavy,
soar aloft and tower up easily to the very clouds, from whence they
shoot, like a thunderbolt, on the quarry they have in view. Other
animals have horns. The greatest strength of some lies in their
backs and necks; and others can only kick. Every species, however,
has both offensive and defensive arms. Their hunting is a kind of
war, which they wage one against another, for the necessities of
life. They have also laws and a government among themselves. Some,
like tortoises, carry the house wherein they were born; others build
theirs, as birds do, on the highest branches of trees, to preserve
their young from the insult of unwinged creatures, and they even lay
their nests in the thickest boughs to hide them from their enemies.
Another, such as the beaver, builds in the very bottom of a pond the
sanctuary he prepares for himself, and knows how to cast up dikes
around it, to preserve himself by the neighbouring inundation.
Another, like a mole, has so pointed and so sharp a snout, that in
one moment he pierces through the hardest ground in order to provide
for himself a subterranean retreat. The cunning fox digs a kennel
with two holes to go out and come in at, that he may not be either
surprised or trapped by the huntsmen. The reptiles are of another
make. They curl, wind, shrink, and stretch by the springs of their