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7If any one doubt this, let him study the different natures of birds, fishes, and animals of the land, and he will easily perceive the truth of these principles, from the variety existing among them. For there is one flesh of birds, another of fishes, and another, very different, of land animals. Birds have a small proportion of earth and water in their nature, a moderate quantity of heat, and a considerable portion of air; whence, being light by nature, from their component elements, they more easily raise themselves in the air. Fishes, by nature adapted to the watery element, are compounded of but a moderate degree of heat, a considerable proportion of air and earth, and a very small portion of water, the element in which they live; and hence, easier exist in it. Wherefore, when removed from it, they soon die. Terrestrial animals, being constituted with much air, heat, and water, and but little earth, cannot live in the water, on account of the quantity of that element naturally preponderating in their composition.
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