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Memoirs relating to European and Asiatic Turkey
Memoirs relating to European and Asiatic Turkey Author:Robert Walpole Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: OBSERVATIONS ON NATURAL HISTORY, RELATING TO PARTS OF jGREECE, AND TO THE ISLAND OF CYPRUS. [FROM THE PAPERS OF THE LATE DR. SIBTHORP. We had observed ... more »a small number of wild animals in Cyprus, but the heights of Parnassus, and the mountains of Hymettus and Pen- deli furnish a retreat to many, and considerably increase the list of Grecian Mammalia. My inquiries were frequent, but the inaccessible haunts of some of these animals, and the difficulty of procuring others made it almost impossible for me to determine the number of species with precision. The domestic animals in Attica and Boeotia are the same as those in Cyprus, excepting the camel, which is not used in Greece; it is very common throughout Asia Minor. Pausanias mentions the bear as an inhabitant of Pendeli; about three years since one was shot in the mountains of Parnassus, and brought to Aracova. The'lynx, the wild cat, the wild boar, the wild goat, the stag, the roebuck, the badger, the martin, and squirrel, inhabit the steeper rocks of Parnassus, and the thick pine-forests above Callidia. The rough mountains about Marathon are frequented by wolves, foxes, and jackalls; weasels are sometimes taken in the villages and outhouses j hares are too numerous to be particularised. The mole burrows in the rich ground of Livadia ; the hedge-hog was brought This passage does not agree with the remark of Aristotle, who says (lib.viii. c. 2".), " that there are no moles at Lebadea, but many about Orchomenus." On the other hand Antigonus C. (c. 10.), and the author De Mirabil. (c. 136.), and Stcphanus Byz, in v. Kofuivstot, say, that moles abound in Ikeotia, but that they are not seen at Coronea, making no mention of Lebadea. See Schneider in Aris. H. A. viii. c. 27. to me in the environs of Athens; the amphibious ...« less