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.
Letter XV To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
