Book 15
1.22
Southern India, like Arabia and Ethiopia, produces cinnamon, nard, and other aromatics. It resembles these countries as regards the effect of the sun’s rays, but it surpasses them in having a copious supply of water, whence the atmosphere is humid, and on this account more conducive to fertility and fecundity; and this applies to the earth and to the water, hence those animals which inhabit both one and the other are of a larger size than are found in other countries. The Nile contributes to fecundity more than other rivers, and among other animals of large bulk, produces the amphibious kind. The Egyptian women also sometimes have four children at a birth, and Aristotle says that one woman had seven children at one birth.Arist. Hist. An vii. 4, who speaks however of five only. He calls the Nile most fecundating and nutritive, on account of the moderate coction effected by the sun’s rays, which leave behind the nutritious part of substances, and evaporate that which is superfluous.
