על בריאת העולם כ׳On the Account of the World's Creation 20
א׳
1[62] Earth and heaven having been equipped with the array appropriate to either—earth on the third day, heaven, as has been recounted, on the fourth—the Creator took in hand to form the races of mortal creatures, beginning with aquatic creatures on the fifth day, deeming that there is no kinship so close as that between animals and the number 5. For living creatures differ from those without life in nothing more than in ability to apprehend by the senses; and sense has a fivefold division, into sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch; and to each of these their Maker assigned special aspects of matter, and an individual faculty of testing it, with which to assay objects coming under its notice. Colours are tested by sight, sounds by hearing, savours by taste, perfumes by smell, while touch assays the softness and hardness of various substances, their smoothness and roughness, and recognizes things hot or cold.
ב׳
2[63] So then he bids all kinds of fish and sea-monsters to take shape, creatures differing in their habitats and their sizes and qualities; for different seas produce to some extent different fish; not everywhere were all kinds formed. This is as we should have expected, for some kinds delight in a lagoon and not in a really deep sea, some in harbours and roadsteads. These can neither crawl up on to the land, nor swim far out from the land; and those that haunt the depths of the open seas avoid jutting headlands or islands or rocks. Some thrive in calm unruffled waters, others in those that are stormy and broken by waves; for, through the exercise of bearing their constant blows and of thrusting back their onset by sheer force, they put on flesh and grow lusty.
ג׳
3Directly after these He made all kinds of birds, as sister kinds to those in the waters, both being things that float. And He left incomplete no form of creature that travels in air.