Page:Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian.djvu/185

 166 to India:— -prickly roaches, which are never in any respect smaller than the asps of Argolis ; and shrimps, which in India are even larger than crahs. These, I must mention, finding their way from the sea up the Ganges, have claws which are very large, and which feel rough to the touch. I have ascertained that those shrimps which pass from the Persian Gulf into the river' Indus have their prickles smooth, and the feelers with which they are furnished elongated and curling, but this species has no claws. (14.) The tortoise is found in India, where it lives in the rivers. It is of immense size, and it has a shell not smaller than a full-sized skiff (cr/ca<^?;), and which is capable of holding ten medimni (120 gallons) of pulse. There are, however, also land-tortoises which may be about as big as the largfest clods turned up in a rich soil where the glebe is very yielding, and the plough sinks deep, and, cleaving the furrows with ease, piles the clods up high. These are said to cast their shell. Husbandmen, and all the hands engaged in field labour, turn them up with their mattocks, and take them out just in the way one extracts wood-worms fyom the plants they have eaten into. They are fat things and their flesh is sweet, having nothing of the sharp flavour of the sea-tortoise. (15.) Intelligent animals are to be met with among ourselves, but they are few, and not at all so common as they are in India. For there we find Digitized by Google