their mouths and nostrils were stopped. This curious formation of
the head may be of singular service to beasts of chase, by affording
them free respiration: and no doubt these additional nostrils are
thrown open when they are hard run.* Mr. Ray observed that, at
Malta, the owners slit up the nostrils of such asses as were hard
worked: for they, being naturally strait or small, did not admit air
sufficient serve them when they travelled or laboured in that hot
climate. And we know that grooms, and gentlemen of the turf,
think large nostrils necessary, and a perfection, in hunters and
running horses.
(* In answer to this account, Mr. Pennant sent me the following
curious and pertinent reply:--'I was much surprised to find in the
antelope something analogous to what you mention as so
remarkable in deer. This animal has a long slit beneath each eye,
which can be opened and shut at pleasure. On holding an orange to
one, the creature made as much use of those orifices as of his
nostrils, applying them to the fruit, and seeming to smell it through
them.')

Oppian, the Greek poet, by the following line, seems to have had
some notion that stags have four spiracula:

Quadrifidae nares, quadruplices ad respirationem canales.
Opp. Cyn. lib. ii. 1. 181.

Writers, copying from one another, make Aristotle say that goats
breathe at their ears; whereas he asserts just the contrary:
'Alcmaeon does not advance what is true, when he avers that goats
breathe through their ears.'--History of Animals. Book I. chap. xi.