CHAPTER V.. Forms Reptilian and Piscine—the Basilisk—Shakespeare and

Forms reptilian and piscine—The basilisk—Shakespeare and Spenser thereupon—King of serpents—The dragon—Aldrovandus thereon—The dragon-stone—The griffin—The scorpion—The “Newe Jewell of Healthe”—Toads—Antipathy between toad and spider—The toad-stone—How to procure it—The weeping crocodile—Cockeram’s Dictionary—The treacherous seal—The salamander—Its potent venom—Its home in fire—Prester John and his kingdom—Pyragones—The chamæleon—Its changing colour—Serpents from air—The gift of invisibility—The serpent-stone—Theriaca—Viper-broth—Antidotal herbs—The soil of Malta—The deaf adder—The two-headed Amphisbæna—Aldrovandus on serpents—Hairy serpents—The deadly asp—Monstrous snails—Snail and spider remedies—Bees—Virgil on their production—Glowworm ink—Marine forms the counterparts of those on land—The sea-monk—The sea-bishop—The sus marinus—The brewers of the storm—The hog-fish—The sea-elephant—The sea-horse—The sea-unicorn—The remora—The dolphin, its special fondness for man—Its love of music—Its changeful colouring—The acipenser—The loving ray—The sargon—The friendship between the oyster and the prawn—The voracious swam-fish—Leviathan—Cause of the crooked mouth of the flounder—The healing tench—Fish medicaments—The vain cuttle-fish—The fish that came to be eaten—Conclusion.

We turn in conclusion to forms reptilian and piscine, and to “such small deer” as may call for a parting word or two in drawing our labours to a close; and here we find no great amount of material to deal with, for though our section includes such fabulous monsters as the basilisk and the dragon, the general knowledge of reptiles and fish was naturally by no means so extensive as that of the more readily visible beasts and birds.

The basilisk, a wingless dragon, according to some authorities—a serpent, if we may credit others—was a peculiarly objectionable creation, not of nature, but of man. Like all such creatures, it is extremely difficult to get a very definite idea of it, since imagination has run rampant in dealing with it. It was but twelve fingers’ breadth long, according to some writers; this we may take to mean some eight or nine inches long, but, unfortunately, its powers of mischief were out of all proportion to its size. It wore a diadem upon its head, as a sign of its kingship over all other serpents, and its poison was death without remedy. Pliny, however, shall be allowed to describe the venomous little monster in his own way, as he does so with a vivid force that it is impossible to surpass:—“With his hies he driveth away other serpents; he moveth his body forward not by multiplied windings like other serpents, but he goeth with half his body upright and aloft from the ground; he killeth all shrubs not only that he toucheth, but that he breatheth upon; he burns up herbs and breaketh the stones, so great is his power for mischief. It is received of a truth that one of them being killed with a lance by a man on horseback, the poison was so strong that it passed along the staff and destroyed both horse and man.” Its touch caused the flesh to fall from the bones of the animal with which it came in contact, and even the glance of its eye was death upon whomsoever it fell. It will be remembered that Shakespeare refers to this belief in the utterance of the Lady Ann in response to Richard’s observation on her eyes—

“Would that they were basilisk’s to strike thee dead.”

In 2 Henry VI. (act iii. sc. 6) the king exclaims,

“Come, basilisk, and kill the innocent gazer with thy sight,”

—while in Henry V. (act iii. sc. 2) Queen Isabel says—

“Your eyes, which hitherto have borne in them Against the French, that met them in their bent The fatal balls of murthering basilisks.”

Suffolk in cursing his enemies invokes against them the deadly basilisk, while Gloster boasts that he will “slay more gazers than the basilisk.” Spenser in like manner mentions one who—

“Secretly his enemies did slay Like as the Basilisk, of serpent’s seede From powerful eyes close venim did convey Into the looker’s hart, and killed farre away.”

The writer of the “Speculum Mundi” hath it that “the Basilisk is the King of Serpents, not for his magnitude nor greatnesse, but for his stately pace and magnanimous minde.” Of this magnanimity, however, he gives no illustration or proof, but simply goes on to give the creature as black a character as all other writers do. “His eyes are red in a kinde of cloudy thicknesse, as if fire were mixt with smoke. His poyson is a very hot and venimous poyson, drying up and scorching the grasse as if it were burned, infecting the aire round about him, so as no other creature can live near him. His hissing, likewise, is said to be as bad, in regard that it blasteth trees, killeth birds, &c., by poysoning of the aire, and if anything be slaine by it the same also proueth venimous to such as touch it,”—an altogether unloving and unlovely brute. It must be borne in mind that whilst we in this nineteenth century simply regard such a creature as a weird fancy, countless generations of mankind have accepted the basilisk as a very grim reality indeed, that might in all its fearful power some day cross their paths.

Even Sir Thomas Browne, who demolished in his book so many common beliefs, is prepared to accept the Basilisk, for while he declares that “many opinions are passant concerning the basilisk, or little King of Serpents, some affirming, others denying, most doubting the relations made thereof,” he, himself, adds “that such an animal there is, if we evade not the testimony of Scripture and humane writers, we cannot safely deny.” For his Scriptural proofs he quotes Psalm xci.: “Super aspidem et Basilicum ambulabis,” and Jeremiah viii., ver. 17: “For behold I will send serpents, cockatrices among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you.” Many of the old writers we may mention in passing, consider the basilisk and the cockatrice the same creature. That by death-dealing glance a basilisk may empoison is not to Browne a thing impossible, “for eies receive offensive impressions from their objects, and may have influences destructive to each other. For the visible species of things strike not our senses immaterially, but streaming in corporall raies doe carry with them the qualities of the object from whence they flow. Thus it is not impossible what is affirmed of this animall; the visible raies of their eies carrying forth the subtilest portion of their poison, which, received by the eie of man or beast, infecteth first the brain, and is thence communicated to the heart.” Again he says, “that deleterious it may be at some distance, and destructive without corporall contaction, there is no high improbability,” and he proceeds, not by any means without thought or shrewdness, to give reasons for his belief in the possibility of such a thing. “For,” says he, “if plagues or pestilentiall Atomes have been conveyed in the air from different Regions, if men at a distance have infected each other, if the shaddowes of some trees be noxious, if Torpedoes deliver their opinion at a distance and stupifie beyond themselves, we cannot reasonably deny that (besides our grosse and restrained poisons requiring contiguity unto their actions) there may proceed from subtiller seeds more agile emanations, which contemn those laws, and invade at distance unexpected.”

The belief in the dragon was one of the articles of faith of our ancestors. In another of our books, “Symbolism in Christian Art,” we have dwelt at considerable length upon the various legends in which the dragon figures, and the symbolic use made of the monster as representative of the evil principle that all are called upon to combat, but our forefathers had a very real belief in the veritable existence of the dragon, not by any means regarding it as a symbol merely, a figure of speech or apt allegory, but as one of the quite definite perils that the adventurous traveller in distant lands might be called upon to face, while preparations of the dragon were a recognized feature in the pharmacopœia. “Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,” and many other horrible ingredients are found in the witches’ cauldron in Macbeth.

In a mediæval work we are told that “the turning joint in the chine of a dragon doth promise an easy and favourable access into the presence of great lords.” One can only wonder why this should be, all clue and thread of connection between the two things being now so hopelessly lost. We must not, however, forget that, smile now as we may at this, there was a time when our ancestors accepted the statement with the fullest faith, and many a man who would fain have pleaded his cause before king or noble, bewailed with hearty regret his want of draconic chine, the “turning-point” of the dragon and of his own fortunes. Another valuable recipe runs as follows: “Take the taile and head of a dragon, the haire growing upon the forehead of a lion, with a little of his marrow also, the froth, moreover, that a horse fomethe at the mouth who hath woon the victorie in running a race, and the nailes besides of a dog’s feete; bind all these together with a piece of leather made of red deer’s skin, with the sinewes partly, of a stag, partly of a fallowe deere, one with another; carry this about with you, and it will work wonders.” It seems almost a pity that the actual benefits to be derived from the possession of this compound are not more clearly defined, as there is no doubt that a considerable amount of trouble would be involved in getting the various materials together, and the zeal and ardour of the seeker after this wonder-working composition would be somewhat damped by doubt as to its actual utility. Mediæval medicine-men surely must have been somewhat chary of adopting the now familiar legend of “prescriptions accurately dispensed” when the onus of making up such a mixture could be laid upon them.

In spite of the familiarity with the appearance of the creature that the obtaining of its head and tail would suggest, the various authorities differ very widely in describing it. Some writers say that dragons are of “a yellow fierie colour, having sharp backs like saws,” and some tell us that “their scales shine like silver.” Some dragons are said to have wings and no feet, some again have both feet and wings, others have neither one nor the other, and are only distinguished from the common sort of serpents by the combs growing upon their heads. Father Pigafetta in his book declares that “Mont Atlas hath plentie of dragons, grosse of body, slow of motion, and in by ting or touching incurably venomous. In Congo is a kind of dragons like in bygnesse unto rammes with wings, having long tayles and divers jawes of teeth of blue and greene, painted like scales, with two feete, and feede on rawe fleshe.” John Leo, in his “History of Africa,” says that the dragon is the progeny of the eagle and wolf. Others affirm that it is generated by the great heat of India, or springs from the volcanoes of Ethiopia.

After reading about almost every possible variation of structure that is open to a dragon, winged, serpentine, two-legged, four-legged, and the like, it is rather quaint to find that Pliny feels that there is a point after all where one must draw the line. He says that “in Ethiopia there are produced as great dragons as in India, being twenty cubits long. But I chiefly wonder at one thing: why Juba should think they were crested.” This suggestion of the crass ignorance of Juba was certainly a little hard on him, as when so very much was believed a crest was a very little extra item to credit, besides as a matter of fact dragons as such, Ethiopian or otherwise, were often described by ancient authorities as having this feature. It really seems like accepting the sheeted spectre of the country churchyard, and then growing sceptical because its hollowed turnip head was still crowned with a little of the foliage that rustic haste or indifference to the verities had failed to cut away.

Aldrovandus, in his “History of Serpents and Dragons,” published in 1640, goes very thoroughly indeed into the subject. The work is in folio size, and the portion devoted to the dragon extends from pages 312 to 360. It must be duly noted that Aldrovandus entirely accepts the dragon as a reality; that this is so is obvious from his dealing with it in this volume instead of placing it in his “Historia Monstrorum.” The book is written in Latin, and amongst the various sections concerning the dragon we find Differentiæ, Forma et Descriptio, Mores, Locus, Antipathia (unlike most other creatures treated by the old author, his vindictive savagely forbids the usual chapter on Sympathia), and Usus in Medicina. Fig. 19 is one of the draconic forms illustrated in the book; the varieties given are very numerous, and of widely differing nature.

Our ancestors used always to prescribe divers kinds of herb-teas to be drunk in the Spring-time, and it is a curious example of instinct in a reptile that the dragon likewise, whom he feels at this season of the year a certain loathing of meat, physics himself into rude health again with the juice of the wild lettuce. Many animals have, or at all events had, if we may credit the wisdom of our forefathers, considerable faith in the medicinal value of herbs. Thus pigeons and blackbirds when suffering from loss of appetite eat bay leaves as a tonic. The bay leaf, too, was a most valuable thing for internal application against the poison of the chameleon, though the elephant when he had inadvertently swallowed one of these creatures, a mistake that seems to have not unfrequently happened, probably from the resemblance in colour of the reptile to the foliage amongst which he was ensconced, pinned his faith in the wild olive leaf.

As the toad, ugly and venomous, bore yet in popular belief a precious jewel in its head, so we find in the writings of various authorities a belief that the still uglier and more venomous dragon bore in like manner the lustrous carbuncle. Jordanus tells us, for example, that in India the dragons that there abound are thus gifted, a fact that the natives turn to their advantage. “These dragons,” he declares, “grow exceeding big, and cast forth from the mouth a most infectious breath, like the thickest smoke rising from fire. These animals come together at the destined time, develop wings, and begin to raise themselves in the air, and then, by the judgment of God, being too heavy, they drop into a certain river which issues from Paradise, and perish there. But all the regions round about watch for the time of the dragons, and when they see that one has fallen they wait for seventy days, and then go down and find the bare bones of the dragon, and take the carbuncle which is rooted in the top of his head.”

Even the dragon, however, may not be quite so black as he is painted, for we read in one old author of a child in Arcadia that had a dragon for its playmate. There was much affection between them, but presently a considerable dread of the dragon’s powers gained possession of the boy, and he compassed the brilliant idea of beguiling his companion well out into the desert and then slipping away. In the very consummation of this plan a new danger arose, as the stripling found himself in an ambush of robbers, whereupon he was only too thankful to call out to his discarded playmate, who immediately came to the rescue and very effectually scattered his despoilers. At this point the history unfortunately stops, but we may perhaps conclude that it follows on the lines of most stories of the affections, and that “they lived happy ever after.” However this may be, it is a charming narrative, and opens out quite a new trait of dragon disposition.

Amongst the many strange creatures that were held to inhabit Ethiopia, the griffins were perhaps the most conspicuous amidst the weird fauna of that marvellous land. “Some men seyn,” and Maundevile in his quaint book of travels fully endorses the idea, “that Griffounes han the Body upward as an Egle and benethe as a Lyoun and treuly thei ben of that schapp. But a Griffoun hathe the body more gret and is more strong thanne eight Lyouns and more gret and stronger than an hundred Egles such as we han amonge us. For a Griffoun ther wil bere, fleynge to his Nest, a gret Hors or two Oxen yoked togidere as thei gon at the Plowghe.”

Chaucer, in the “Canterbury Tales,” says of one of his characters:—

“Blake was his berd, and manly was his face, The cercles of his eyen in his hed They gloweden betwixten yelwe and red, And like a griffon loked he about.”

Ctesias describes the griffin in all sober earnestness as a bird with four feet of the size of a wolf, and having the legs and claws of a lion, their feathers being red upon the breast and black on the rest of the body. Glanvil says of it: “the claws of a griffin are so large and ample that he can seize an armed man as easily by the body as a hawk a little bird.” The griffin is often met with in heraldry past and present, either as a crest, charge, or supporter of the arms. A very familiar example of its employment in the latter service may be seen in the arms of the City of London, or exalted on lofty pedestal, where, in lieu of Temple Bar, it marks the westward civic boundary. Shakespeare, Milton, and others of our poets and writers, refer to the griffin.

Anyone reading the herbals of Gerard, Parkinson, and others, or the various medical books of the Middle Ages, will scarcely have failed to notice how frequently reference is made to the scorpion. In these later days a man might well journey from John o’ Groats to the Land’s End, and run no peril of an encounter, but in the earlier times we have referred to, the sting of the scorpion was a very present dread, and numerous remedies for it were devised. The beautiful blue forget-me-not of our streams is in all herbals and floras till the beginning of this century called the scorpion-grass, from its supposed virtue as a cure, a remedy that was supposed to be sufficiently indicated from its head of flowers and buds being rolled round into some more or less satisfactory resemblance to a scorpion’s tail. Cogan, in his “Haven of Health,” tells how “a certaine Italian, by often smelling the Basill, had a scorpion bred in his braine, and after vehement and long paines he died therof.”

In the “Newe Iewell of Health, gathered out of the best and most approved Authors by that excellent Doctor Gesnerus,” we find some extraordinary preparations. Most of these are of a botanical nature, but we also have “Oyle holy prepared out of dead men’s bones, Oyle or distilled lycour gotten out of the Gray, Oyle marveylous gotten out of the Beuer, Oyle of frogges ryght profitable to such as are payned of ye gout, Oyle of antes egges,” and many other strange remedies for the ills that the flesh is heir to. Among them, a forerunner of the ideas of Hahnemann, and the notion of like curing like, we find “Oyle of Scorpion’s distilled against Poysons.” Apropos of the oil from dead men’s bones, we may point out the special charm that our ancestors seemed to find in anything associated with the charnel house—thus one favourite remedy was the moss that grew on a dead man’s skull, another was a pill compounded from the brains of a man that had been hanged; powder of mummy in like manner was in high repute, and to those who found pill or powder too nauseous a draught of spring water from the skull of a murdered man was at once refreshing and health-giving. The following recipe for the cure of a wound seems to show that our forefathers had no great fear of blood poisoning: “Take of the moss of the skull of a strangled man two ounces, of the mumia of man’s blood one ounce and a halfe, of earth wormes washed in water or wine and dryed, one ounce and a halfe, of the fatte of a Boare two drams, of oyle of Turpintine two drams: pound them and keepe them in a longe narrow pott, and dippe into the oyntment the yron or wood, or some sallowe sticke made wet with blood in opening the wound.” The medicine and surgery of the Middle Ages must have been a powerful influence in checking redundance of population.

Toads were in great repute in sickness. “In time of common contagion,” writes Sir Kenelm Digby in 1660, “men use to carry about with them the powder of a toad, and sometimes a living toad or spider shut up in a box, which draws the contagious air, which otherwise would infect the party,” and many other illustrations of their employment as preventives or remedies might be given. The spider and the toad seem to have been each regarded as most venomous creatures, and in many of the old remedies one or other of them at will are recommended, either alternative being regarded as equally efficacious; thus for whooping cough, if one cannot find a toad to thrust up the chimney, two spiders in a walnut shell will serve equally well.

There was held to be mortal antipathy between the toad and the spider, and the result of a meeting between them was a conflict fatal to one or both of the antagonists. The Aster Tripolium, a well-known English wild plant, was originally called the toad-wort. “When a spider stings a toad, and the toad is becoming vanquished, and the spider stings it thickly and frequently, and the toad cannot avenge itself, it bursts assunder,” at least, the author of the “Ortus Sanitatis” says it does, but whether this arises from venom or from vexation he does not explain. “If such a burst toad be near the toad-wort, it chews it and becomes sound again; but if it happens that the wounded toad cannot get to the plant, another toad fetches it and gives it to the wounded one.” Topsell, in his “Natural History,” vouches for this having been actually witnessed.

That the skin of the toad gives forth an acrid secretion which serves the creature as a defence is established beyond doubt, but its hurtful properties have been greatly exaggerated. Dryden refers to the lady “who squeezed a toad into her husband’s wine,” the inference being she was in heart murderous. Spenser makes Envy ride upon a wolf and chew “between his cankred teeth a venomous tode,” while Diodorus declares that toads were generated by the heat of the sun from the dead bodies of ducks putrefying in mud.

Lily, in his “Euphues,” declares that “the foule toade hath a faire stone in his head,” an idea that Shakespeare has immortalized in the beautiful lines that remind us how:—

“Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Yet wears a precious jewel in its head.”

The crapaudine, or toad-stone, is of a dull brown colour. It was believed to possess sovereign virtue against poison from its changing colour when in the presence of any noxious thing: hence it was often worn as a protection in finger rings. Figs. 20 and 21 are good examples of this use. They are both from rings in the Londesborough collection. The belief in the virtues of the toad-stone was not only popular in England, but was one of the fallacies accepted throughout Europe. Though the stone is well-known to geologists as a variety of trap-rock, the accepted belief was that it was found only in the head of the toad. Fenton, writing in 1569, affirms that “there is found in the heads of old and great toads a stone which they call borax or stelon,” and Lupton, some fifty years afterwards, writes: “the crepaudia or toad-stone is very valuable, touching any part envenomed by the bite of a rat, wasp, spider, or other poisonous beast it ceases the pain and swelling thereof.” Ben Jonson also refers to it in his play of “The Fox.” Albertus Magnus, writing about 1275, adds the great wonder that this stone when taken out of the creature’s head has the figure of a toad upon it, while others declare that the stone itself is of the form of a toad. It is a treasure not easily to be procured, for the toad “envieth much that man should haue that stone,” declares Lupton, the author of “A Thousand Notable Things,” hence it was very necessary to beware of useless counterfeits, and this old writer gives us a ready means of detecting them. “To know,” says he, “whether the toad-stone called crepaudia be the righte and perfect stone or not, holde the stone before a toad so that he may see it, and if it be a right and true stone the toad will leap towards it, and make as though he would snatch it from you,” a proceeding that must have required a considerable amount of nerve on the part of anyone duly impressed with the fear of the deadly venom of the creature.

The same ancient authority on the subject very obligingly gives “a rare good way to get the stone out of the toad.” It suffices to “put a great or overgrown toad, first bruised in divers places, into an earthen pot: put the same into an ant’s hillocke, and cover the same with earth, which toad at length the ants will eat, so that the bones of the toad and stone will be left in the pot.” This certainly seems simplicity itself, but, unfortunately, most authorities agree in saying that the stone, to have any real virtue, should be obtained while the creature is yet alive. Porta has his doubts on the whole matter, nevertheless he gives some hints that might be of value to those of greater faith. “There is a stone,” he says, “called Chelonites—the French name it Crapodina, which they report to be found in the head of a great old Toad; and if it can be gotten from him while he is alive, it is soveraign against poyson. They say it is taken from living toads in a red cloth, in which colour they are much delighted; for while they sport themselves upon the scarlet the stone droppeth out of their head and falleth through a hole made in the middle into a box set under for the purpose, else they will suck it up again. But I never met with a faithfull person who said that he had found it: nor could I ever find one, though I have cut up many. Nevertheless, I will affirm this for truth that those stones which are pretended to be taken out of Toads are minerals. But the value is certain: if any swallow it down with poyson it will preserve him from the malignity of it, for it runneth about with the poyson and asswageth the power of it that it becometh vain and of no force.” Boethius tells us how he watched throughout a whole night an old toad that he had placed on a piece of scarlet cloth, but is obliged to confess that nothing occurred to “gratify the great pangs of his whole night’s restlessness,” as the toad entirely declined to be lured into any frivolities that might cause him the loss of his precious jewel.

Browne, in his exposure of the various popular errors current in his time, presently arrives at this belief, but finds himself unable to express any very definite opinion, and takes refuge in compromise. “As for the stone,” quoth he, “commonly called a Toad-stone, which is presumed to be found in the head of that animall, we first conceive it not a thing impossible, nor is there any substantiall reason why in a Toad there may not be found such hard and lapideous concretions; for the like we daily observe in the heads of Fishes, as Codds, Carps, and Pearches. Though it be not impossible, yet it is surely very rare, as we are induced to believe from inquiry of our own; from the triall of many who have been deceived and the frustrated search of Porta, who, upon the explorement of many, could scarce finde one. Nor is it only of rarity, but may be doubted whether it be of existency, or really any such stone in the head of a Toad at all. For though Lapidaries and questonary enquires affirm it, yet the writers of Mineralls and natural speculators are of another belief, conceiving the stones which bear this name to be a Minerall concretion, not to be found in animalls but in fields. What therefore best reconcileth these divided determinations may be a middle opinion; that of these stones some are minerall and to be found in the earth; some animall, to be met with in Toads, at least by the induration of their cranies. The first are many and manifold, to be found in Germany and other parts, the last are fewer in number, and in substance not unlike the stones in Carps’ heads. This is agreeable unto the determination of Aldrovandus, and is also the judgment of the learned Spigelius in his Epistle unto Pignorius.” If only a toad with an indurated cranium could be discovered, everything would fall into its right place!

Through the Middle Ages men believed that the toad exercised the power of fascination not only upon its insect prey, but upon all other creatures, including man himself, and even so far back as the days of the classical writers it was a fully accepted belief that whosoever had the misfortune to be looked squarely in the eyes by a toad would find that, basilisk-like, the gaze to him meant death.

The belief that the crocodile shed tears over his prey is a very ancient one; various motives have been assigned for this grief, but the generally accepted belief is that the whole proceeding is a fraud, perpetrated with the idea of attracting sympathetic passers-by within reach of his formidable jaws; hence he has been accepted as a symbol of dissimulation. We get an excellent illustration of this in Shakespeare’s King Henry VIII., where Henry is said by Queen Margaret to be—

“Too full of foolish pity; and Gloster’s show Beguiles him, as the mournful crocodile With sorrow snares relenting passengers.”

Spenser, in the Faerie Queene, deals equally clearly and explicitly with the same fancy in the lines—

“As when a wearie traveiler, that strayes By muddy shore of broad seven-mouthed Nile, Unweeting of the perillous wandring wayes, Doth meete a cruell craftie Crocodile, Which in false grefe hyding his harmefull guile, Doth weepe full sore, and sheddeth tender teares; The foolish man, that pities all this while His mournful plight, is swallowed up unawares, Forgetfull of his owne that mindes an other’s cares.”

“Thereupon,” ungallantly adds an old writer, “came this proverb that is applied unto women when they weep. Lachrymæ Crocodili, the meaning whereof is, that as the Crocodile when he crieth goeth about most to deceive, so doth a woman most commonly when she weepeth.” Thus Othello misanthropically exclaims—

“If that the earth could teem with woman’s tears, Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile.”

In the same spirit Barnfield, in his “Cassandra,” written in the year 1595, has the following passage:—

“He, noble lord, fearlesse of hidden treason, Sweetely salutes this weeping Crocodile; Excusing every cause with instant reason They kept him from her sight so long a while; She faintly pardons him; smiling by art, For life was in her lookes, death in her hart.”

The author of the “Speculum Mundi,” who is ever seeking a moral or an opportunity of improving the occasion, declares that “the crocodile when he hath devoured a man and eaten all up but the head, will sit and weep over it as if he expressed a great portion of sorrow for his cruel feast, but it is nothing so, for when he weeps it is because his hungrie paunch wants such another prey. And from hence the proverb took beginning, viz. Crocodiles’ tears; which is then verified when one weeps cunningly without sorrow, dissembling heaviness out of craftinesse; like unto many rich men’s heirs who mourn in their gowns when they laugh in their sleeves; or like to other dissemblers of the like nature who have sorrow in their eyes, but joy and craftiness in their hearts.” However this may be, the supposititious tears of the crocodile have been turned to abundant literary and moral account. The tears of the crocodile were supposed, according to some who were great authorities in their day and generation, to crystallize into gems, but as supposititious tears could only produce supposititious gems the actual value would be but small.

In an early Bestiary it states that “if a crocodile comes across a man it kills him, but it remains inconsolable the rest of its life;” but why it suffers this life-long remorse we are not told. This old writer also tells us of the hydra, “a very wise animal who understands well how to injure the crocodile.” The modus operandi is very simple, and the injury inflicted seems beyond question:—“When the hydra sees the crocodile go to sleep it covers itself over with slimy mud, and wriggles itself into the crocodile’s mouth, penetrates into its stomach, and then tears it assunder.” The dolphin appears to be another foe to be by no means despised. Pliny tells us that when these desire to pass up the Nile the crocodiles, who regard the river as their peculiar preserve, greatly resent their presence, and endeavour to drive them back. As the dolphins fully realize that they are no match for their foes in fair fight, they take refuge in their superior activity and craft, and having a dorsal fin as sharp edged as a knife, they swim swiftly beneath the crocodiles, and as the under portion of these creatures is unprotected by the armour that is so conspicuous on the upper parts of their bodies, with one sharp gash they rip the crocodile completely open.

It was a Greek superstition that beneath the visible exterior of the seal was concealed a woman, and that when a swimmer ventured too far he ran great risk of being seized by a seal and strangled. The creature then carried the lifeless body to some desert shore and wept over it, from which arose the popular saying that when a woman shed false tears she cried like a seal. As the desert shore implies absence of spectators, it seems difficult to tell what authority there is for the statement as to what went on there, and even when this initial difficulty is overcome it seems equally impossible to suggest any satisfactory reason for the gruesome proceedings of this weird woman-seal or seal-woman, either in the preliminary murderous attack or the subsequent lamentation. Whatever strange idea may have originally started the story, it is a curious parallel to that of the weeping crocodile.

The salamander received its full mythical development in mediæval days, though the older writers refer to it occasionally, and we note in the writings of such men as Pliny the first steps taken towards the erection of that fabric of fancy and superstition that later on became so conspicuous. The ancients asserted that the salamander was never seen in bright weather, but only made its appearance during heavy rain, and that it was of so frigid a nature that if it did but touch fire it quenched it as completely as if ice were piled thereon. It was, moreover, declared to be so venomous that the mere climbing of a tree by the animal is amply sufficient to poison all the fruit, so that those who afterwards eat thereof perished without remedy, and that if it entered a river the stream was so effectually poisoned that all who drank thereof must die. Glanvil, an English writer in the thirteenth century, roundly declares as historic fact that four thousand men and two thousand horses of the army of Alexander the Great were killed by drinking from a stream that had been thus infected.

It was in the Middle Ages an article of faith that the salamander was bred and nourished in fire, hence when the creature is represented it is always placed in the midst of flames. Our illustration, fig. 22, from Porta, is a fair typical example. How the creature should be nourished in the flames, while its mere contact with them suffices to extinguish them, seems a practical difficulty, but the contradiction of ideas does not seem to have troubled our forefathers, and the two mutually destructive statements rest side by side equally unquestioned in the writings of all the authorities. Pliny, having his doubts, thrust a salamander into the fire, and the unfortunate victim of science was quickly shrivelled up and consumed. One would have thought that this crucial test of actual experiment would have settled the whole matter, and reduced the fire-extinguishing theory to oblivion, but it takes much more than that to kill an old and well-established belief, as we may see even in our own day where many superstitions still flourish in spite of common sense, education, and experience arrayed against them.

De Thaun in his “Bestiary” declares that “the Salamander is of such a nature that if it come by chance where there shall be burning fire it shall at once extinguish it. The beast is so cold and of such a quality that fire will not be able to burn where it shall enter, nor will trouble happen where it shall be.” This latter statement is entirely at variance with the general belief in its deadliness, but all these statements are dwelt on, exaggerated, or suppressed, as occasion and the moral to be deduced requires. As in this particular case the pious writer desired to see in the creature an emblem of Azarias, Ananias and Misael praising God without hurt in the fiery furnace, any reference to its noxious properties was clearly out of place, and on the strength of this association it even receives a somewhat negative form of commendation on its virtues as a peace-producer. This we are bound to say is the only good word we have ever seen ascribed by any of the writers of the past to this unfortunate creature, and it beyond doubt only receives even this solitary commendation because the exigencies of what the old writers thought the greater truth appeared to call for it.

Asbestos was, from its incombustible property, long held to be the wool of the salamander. In the Middle Ages popular imagination was greatly exercised over a mysterious Ruler in the East known as Prester John. He was held to be a Christian, and to bear sway in Asia over a widely-extended empire, but the stories of returning travellers showed that the idea had no foundation in fact, and the scene of the monarchy was then shifted to Abyssinia. The first reference to this sovereign would appear to be in the Chronicle of one Otto of Freisingin, who wrote about the middle of the twelfth century, and afterwards allusions to this mysterious monarch frequently recur. In the Chronicle of Albericus, about a hundred years later than that of Otto, we read that “Presbyter Joannes sent his wonderful letter to various Christian princes, and especially to Manuel of Constantinople, and Frederic, the Roman Emperor.” In this letter, a very lengthy one, he claims to be Lord of Lords, and to receive the tribute and homage of seventy-two kings. “In the three Indies,” saith he, “our Magnificence rules, and our land extends beyond India: it reaches toward the sunrise over the wastes, and it trends towards deserted Babylon, near the Tower of Babel.” Whatever of credence, much or little, we may give to this letter, it is at least interesting to us as showing the set of opinion on, amongst other matters, things zoological, and therefore comes within the scope of our book. He gives many details as to the plants, the gold, and precious stones, and so forth, and also states that “our land is the home of elephants, dromedaries, camels, crocodiles, metacollinarum, cammetennus, tensevetes, white and red lions, white bears, crickets, griffins, lamias, wild horses, wild men, men with horns, one-eyed, men with eyes before and behind, centaurs, fauns, satyrs, and pygmies; it is the home, too, of the phœnix, and of nearly all living animals. In one of our lands, hight Zone, are worms called in our tongue salamanders. These worms can only live in fire, and they build cocoons like silkworms, which are unwound by the ladies of our palace and spun into cloth and dresses, which are worn by our Exaltedness. These dresses, when we would wash them and clean, are cast into flames.” Browne, in his exposure of vulgar errors, gravely denies the existence of wool on a salamander at all, truly pointing out that “it is a kinde of Lizard, a quadruped corticated and depilous, that is, without woolle, furre, or haire,” an altogether hopeless animal to shear.

Porta mentions that some peculiar creatures called “Pyragones be generated in the fire: certain little flying beasts so called because they live and are nourished in the fire, and yet they fly up and down in the air. This is strange; but that is more strange, that as soon as ever they come out of the fire into any cold air presently they die.” Porta of course uses the word presently in the older sense of at this present moment, so that it really is, as he says, a wonder that these creatures are able to fly about in the air, when its effect upon them is immediate death. We have ourselves been gravely told that if the fires at the great iron-works in the Midland Counties were not occasionally extinguished an uncertain but fearful something would be generated in them, and it seems only natural that after the imagination has peopled earth and sea with strange monsters, and placed in the upper regions of the air the paradise-birds and other creatures that derived all needful sustenance from that element alone, that the remaining element, fire, should also have its peculiar inhabitants and monsters.

The chamæleon was for centuries supposed to live only on air, while its property of changing colour under the influence of its surroundings was greatly exaggerated.

Shakespeare, the great storehouse of mediæval folk-lore, makes Speed, in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, exclaim:—

“Tho’ the chamæleon Love can live on the air, I’m one that am nourish’d by my victuals,”

while Gloster, in King Henry VI., boasts that he could “add colours to the chamæleon.”

Gower, in like manner, asserts that vainglory is

“Lich unto the Camelion Whiche upon every sondry hewe That he beholt he mote newe His colour.”

Hence, again, other moralists declare that men and women inconstant and fickle are like unto chamæleons.

It has been asserted by Avicenna that a decoction of chamæleon put into a bath will make him green-coloured that stayeth long therein, but that by degrees this verdant hue will pass away, and the man recover his natural colour, while Porta declares that “with the Gall of a Chamæleon cut into water Wheezles will be called together.” Why anyone should want to call a wheezle together he does not explain, so that the receipt, simple as it is, seems to be of no great practical value.

It has been rather a disgusting belief that if a man will lick a lizard all over he will not only be safe from the personal inconvenience of having a lizard go down his throat some day when he might be sleeping in the fields, but that he will have the power henceforward of healing any sore to which he applies his tongue.

Our ancestors held many strange beliefs respecting serpents and snakes—one of these was they were created from hair, “women’s hairs especially”—as one old writer is careful to emphasize—“because they are naturally longer than men’s.” One old authority, our oft-quoted Porta, hesitates not to say that “we have experienced also that the hairs of a horse’s mane laid in the waters become serpents, and our friends have tried the same,” and he goes on to mention as a truism to be almost apologized for from its self-evident character, that “no man denies but that serpents are easily gendred of man’s flesh, specially of his marrow.” Ælianus in like manner declares that a dead man’s marrow, being putrified, becomes a serpent. Florentinus affirms that basil chewed and laid in the sun will engender serpents.

Another strange idea was that serpents conferred the power of invisibility. Thus John Aubrey, an antiquary and author, and one of the earliest Fellows of the Royal Society, gives in full faith the following recipe: “Take on Midsummer night at xii, when all the planets are above the earth, a serpent, and kill him, and skinne him, and dry him in the shade, and bring it to a powder. Hold it in your hand, and you will be invisible.” His book entitled “Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme” is a perfect storehouse of old-world superstitions, an inexhaustible mine of quaint imaginings.

The “pretious stone” theory that we have already encountered in one or two other cases, the toad being the most notable, is in full force again amongst the various strange notions concerning serpents. The recipe for its possession, given by Jacobus Hollerius, is simplicity itself, as it is merely necessary that the “snake be tyed by the tayle with a corde, and hanged up, and a vessell full of water set below; after a certayne time he will avoyde out of his mouth a stone.” The stone is of great medicinal value; for instance, “it fullye and wholelye helpes the partye that hath the dropsye,” by merely being attached to the body of the sufferer, and in divers other ways that we need not stay to particularize, proves itself a stone of price. Jordanus, amongst his other Indian experiences, came across serpents with horns, evidently the cerastes or horned viper, and others with precious stones. Tennant tells us that the Cingalese believe that the stomach of the cobra contains a stone of inestimable value, and this belief, absurd as we deem it, is really hardly more far-fetched than such a story as pearls being found in oyster-shells would appear to a man who heard it for the first time.

Snakes and serpents, like most other repulsive things, have found their way into the pharmacopœia and the menu. Galen tells us that the Egyptians used to eat vipers as other people did eels, and it is a very old-world superstition that viper’s flesh is an antidote to the viper’s poison. In classic and mediæval days a famous remedy, originally known as mithridate or theriaca, and later on as Venice treacle, was held to owe much of its virtue as a vermifuge and antidote to all kinds of poison to the vipers that formed one of its ingredients. It was retained in the London Pharmacopœia until about a hundred years ago. Its constituent parts changed somewhat from time to time; at one period we see it contained seventy-three ingredients. The vipers were added to the horrible mess by Andromachus, the physician to the Emperor Nero, and became a leading element in the prescription. The name treacle was at one time applied to any confection or syrup, and it is only in these latter days that the name has become associated exclusively with the syrup of molasses: it is derived from the Greek Therion, a name given to the viper, so that the schoolboys’ lunch of bread and treacle is the direct etymological outcome of the abominable adder’s broth of the Roman emperor.

One often sees in these ancient remedies a foreshadowing of the homœopathic notion of like to like; thus Porta prescribes “a present remedy” for the poison of the viper, declaring that “the viper itself, if you slay her, and strip off her skin, cut off her head and tail, cast away all her entrails, boil her like an Eele, and give her to one that she hath bitten, it will cure him,” but in another place he says “for serpent’s bites I have found nothing more excellent than the earth which is brought from the isle of Malta, for the least dust of it put into their mouths kills them presently.” There is evidently here some sort of connection endeavoured to be established between the escape of St. Paul while in Malta from the evil effects of the poison of a viper and this present prescription, and it no doubt arose from the old legend that, like St. Patrick in Ireland, St. Paul, after his experience of them, banished all snakes from the island. Once granted that a serpent cannot live on the soil of Malta, it follows almost as a matter of course that a little of this same soil administered to it anywhere the wide world over will prove fatal to it. The recipe is, nevertheless, a little vague, as it deals exclusively with the destruction of the serpent, which is not at all the same thing as the restoration to health of the sufferer from its poison fangs.

Prevention being better than cure, the hint that Cogan gives in his “Haven of Health” should prove of value. “The setting of Lauender within the house in floure pots must needes be very wholesome, for it driueth away venemous wormes, both by strawing and by the sauour of it,” and he adds that “being drunke in wine it is a remedie against poyson.” Tusser, in his book on Husbandry, gives a long list of “strowing herbes,” their fragrance and remedial value being held in high esteem by our forefathers:—

“No daintie flowre or herbe that growes on grownd, No arborett with painted blossoms drest, And smelling sweete, but there it might be fownd To bud out faire, and throwe her sweet smels al around.”

The bunches of flowers that are still presented to the Judges on the opening of the Law Courts are the graceful and now happily needless developments of the bunches of herbs that were once placed on their desks to avert the dangers of the gaol fever, that with its noxious breath slew not the hapless prisoners alone, but the judges on the bench, and administered wild justice on all alike for the contempt of sanitary laws, and for the brutality that was rampant and supreme.

Fennel was, according to our forefathers, held in esteem by the serpents themselves, and one scarcely wonders that this should be so, if it be true that “so soone as they taste of it they become young again, and with the juice thereof repair their sight.” How this juice is applied externally by the serpent is not explained, but it very naturally suggested the idea to the medical men of the Middle Ages that what was so good for serpents might prove equally valuable to suffering humanity, hence “to repair a man’s sight that is dim” nothing better than fennel could be found, though they hesitated to promise also to the human subject rejuvenescence.

The Syrians, according to one venerable authority, had a most singular defence for their country, the land being full of snakes that would do no harm to the natives even if they trod upon them, but which eagerly assailed the people of any other nation and destroyed them. Naturally therefore the Syrians cherished such a valuable protection, though such a state of things would hardly accord with modern notions of free trade and the intercourse of nations. The discovery of one wonder frequently leads to knowledge of others, and Aristotle has a companion story in his “History of Animals,” of scorpions that in Caria sting to death the natives of the country, but do no harm to strangers. In like manner, according to Maundevile, in the island called Silha, wherever that may be, “the men of that yle seen comonely that the Serpentes and the wilde Bestes of that Countree nee will not don non harm, ne touchen with evylle, no strange man that entreth into that Contree, but only to men that ben born of the same Countree.” This differential treatment seems distinctly hard on the aborigines.

“It is observable,” quoth the author of the “Miracles of Art and Nature,” that “in Crete there is bred no Serpents or Venomous Beasts or Worms, Ravenous or hurtful Creatures, so their Sheep graze very securely without any Shepheard; yet if a Woman happen to bite a Man anything hard he will hardly be cured of it,” a statement which brings forth the very natural conclusion that “if this be true, then the last part of the Priviledge foregoing (of breeding no hurtful Creature) must needs be false.”

Amongst various familiar country beliefs lasting even to the present day is the one summed up in the well-known expression, “deaf as an adder.” It has for centuries been an accepted belief that the adder lays one ear upon the ground, and closes the other with its tail, and it doubtless has its origin in that passage in the psalms of David where it states that “the deaf adder stoppeth her ears, and will not heed the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely,” and we meet with this idea over and over again in our own literature. Thus Shakespeare writes in King Henry VI.—

“What! art thou, like the adder, waxen deaf? Be poisonous too.”

And, again, in his Troilus and Cressida we find the passage—

“Pleasure and revenge have ears more deaf than adders.”

In Orlando Furioso, too, we find an interesting reference to the old fancy:—

“He flies me now, nor more attends my pain Than the deaf adder heeds the charmer’s strain.”

Many varieties of serpents were known to the ancients, and some of them, as the Cerastes, are quite recognizable from the descriptions given, but of others we have no means of identification. The two-headed Amphisbæna, for example, that was credited with such venomous malignity that nothing but twice the normal power of offence sufficed for its deadly attack. The Amphisbæna was an article of faith with Nicander, who was the first to introduce it to the scientific world of his name, and it is referred to by Galen, Pliny, Ælian, and many other ancient writers, who gravely describe this especially objectionable reptile, “a small kind of serpent which moveth backward and forward, and hath two heads, one at either extreme.” The creature is now entirely lost to science.

Aldrovandus, in his history of serpents, gives an illustration of the basilisk, a serpentine form, but having eight legs, and on its head a crown. Another of his figures shows us a serpentine form again, this time with two legs, the moderation in this direction being fully compensated by the gift of seven heads of human form, while another has the serpent-like body, but to this are added two legs and feet like those of a cock, and the creature has six cocks’ heads. All these creatures are put forth and described in all seriousness, so it is evident that the author must either himself have been excessively credulous, or that he must have expected to find his readers so. It is manifest that such inventions are of the lamest possible type. Nothing could be easier or more fatuous than to fill a folio volume with serpents having three cats’ heads, five lions’ heads, seven bisons’ heads, or twenty rats’ heads, and distribute legs in the same liberal and senseless manner. His drawing, fig. 23, of a two-headed lizard is the nearest approach we can give our readers to the Amphisbæna.

Burton tells us that in Samogitia, a small province in Poland, the people nourish amongst them “a kind of four-footed serpents, above three handfuls in length, which they worship as their household gods, and if mischance do happen to any of their family, it is imputed presently to some want of due observations of these ugly creatures.” Some old writers tell us of hairy serpents, and depict a thing something like the well-known larva of the tiger-moth, the caterpillar popularly known as the “woolly bear,” and familiar enough to all dwellers in the country, the only difference, though that a very serious one, being that the woolly bear is barely three inches long, while the hairy serpents are stretched to any number of feet that the credulity of the narrator will permit.

Fig. 24 is a facsimile from one of the illustrations in Munster’s “de Africæ regionibus,” and represents the sort of thing that he would have us believe was to be found in his days in Africa, that great home of the weird and mysterious. The perspective effect of the coils of the upper creature, as they recede in the distance towards the horizon, suggests a terrific length, something far exceeding any of the possibilities of the present day, but this may be only a slip of draughtmanship, or a polite desire on the part of the two-headed reptile not to crowd up its three-headed companion.

The asp, from being freely found in Egypt and other parts of North Africa, was well known to the naturalists of Greece and Rome, and its deadly nature fully understood, though the facts are perhaps rather against them when they assert that they are such affectionate creatures that they are always found in pairs and cannot live without their mates. We are told that should one of the pair be killed, this sweet connubial bliss is exchanged for deadly ferocity and instant revenge. The unhappy man is closely pursued and relentlessly tracked, and finds no safety amongst his fellows, as the avenger knows him from all others, and will not be turned aside. Distance is no object, and difficulties no hindrance, and all that the luckless individual can do is to take to his heels with all celerity, and at the earliest opportunity embark in a boat or swim a river, and thus shake off his relentless pursuer.

Democritus tells us that if we mingle the blood of certain birds together a serpent will be engendered. Whoso eateth of this serpent shall know the language of birds, and be able to join in the conversation of any or all of the great feathered host, singing with the lark, cawing with the rook, hooting with the owl, and being thoroughly conversant with all that passes between them.

Maundevile tells us, in his wonderful “Voiage and Travaile,” of an island where one finds “a kynde of Snayles that ben so grete that many persones may loggen hem in hur Schelles, as men woulde done in a litylle Hous”—a sufficiently striking feature in the landscape of that now unknown land.

Snails entered largely into the rustic Materia Medica, and not only indeed into rural practice but into the most courtly and exclusive circles, for we find Sir John Floyer, the physician to Charles II., prescribing thus for dulness of hearing: “Take a grey snaile, pricke him, and putt ye water which comes from him into ye eare and stop it with black woole, and it will cure.” He left behind him a folio volume of such-like valuable recipes, and the manuscript may yet be seen in the Cathedral Library at Lichfield. He was a native of that city.

Spiders were also deemed of great remedial value. When a child has whooping cough, one of the parents should catch a spider and hold it over the head of the patient, repeating three times, “Spider, as you waste away, whooping cough no longer stay.” The spider must then be hung up in a bag over the mantel-piece, and when it has dried up the cough will have disappeared.

Burton, the author of the “Anatomy of Melancholy,” writes: “Being in the country in the vacation time, not many years ago, at Lindley in Leicestershire, my father’s house, I first observed this amulet of a spider in a nutshell wrapped in silk, so applied for an ague by my mother. This methought was most absurd and ridiculous. I could see no warrant for it, till at length, rambling amongst authors, as I often do, I found this very medicine in Dioscorides, approved by Matthiolus, and I began to have a better opinion of it, and to give more credit to amulets when I saw it in some parties answer to experience.” Gerarde, in his “Historie of Plants,” found that such a remedy, however good in theory, however supported by ancient authority, would not bear the strain of actual use. He shall however speak for himself in his own refreshingly quaint way. “It is needlesse,” he writes, “here to alledge those things that are added touching the little wormes or magots, found in the heades of the Teasell, which are to be hanged about the necke, for they are nothing else but most vaine and trifling toies, as my selfe haue proved a little before, hauing a most grieuous ague, and of long continuance: notwithstanding physicke charmes, these wormes hanged about my necke, spiders put into a nutshell and divers such foolish toies that I was constrained to take by phantasticke people’s procurement: notwithstanding, I say, my helpe came from God himselfe, for these medicines, and all other such things, did me no good at all.” It is passing strange that such so-called remedies, so easily proved valueless, should have held their ground for centuries, and are doubtless even now in the byways of our land as firmly believed in as they were nigh two thousand years ago. When one of our own family was ailing, a woman in the little Wiltshire village where we were then staying strongly advised us to drop some peas down the well as an infallible means of restoration to health!

Bees were held to be bred out of putrefying carcases, an idea that doubtless arose in very early times, as we find it referred to by Virgil and other ancient authors, and the Biblical story of the swarm of bees found by Sampson in the carcase of the lion that he slew would be held as confirmation, though anyone reading the story carefully would see that no such inference could be drawn from it. Many weeks had elapsed between the slaying of the lion and the discovery of the honey, ample time for the birds and beasts of prey to have cleared away the flesh, and for the heat of the sun to have dried up all putrefaction and rendered the skeleton a sufficiently cleanly and suitable place for the wild bees to form their combs within. Herodotus tells us that when the Amathusians revenged themselves on Onesilus, by whom they had been besieged, by cutting off his head and hanging it over one of their city gates, the skull presently alone remained, and in this hollow chamber a swarm of bees settled and filled it with honeycomb.

The fourth Georgic of Virgil, which is devoted to the subject of bees, gives account of a simple method whereby the race of bees, if diminished or lost, might be replenished. He speaks of it as an art practised in Egypt, and it is easy to see that it originated in accounts of bees swarming in the dead bodies of animals. The process was to kill a young bullock by stopping up his nostrils, so that the skin should be unbroken by any wound, and then leaving it for nine days in a position where it would be undisturbed, when:—

“Behold a prodigy, for from within The broken bowels and the bloated skin, A buzzing sound of bees the ear alarms: Straight issuing through the sides assembling swarms. Dark as a cloud they make a wheeling flight, Then on a neighbouring tree descending, light. Like a large cluster of black grapes they show, And make a large dependence from the bough.”

In this account we see clearly enough that the belief in the generation of the bees from the putrefying body is frankly accepted. The author of the “Speculum Mundi,” hundreds of years after the Georgics were written, declares that a dead horse breeds wasps, that from the body of an ass proceed humble bees, while a mule produces hornets. Those who would have bees must seek them in a dead calf, though he adds the curious limitation, “if the west winde blow.” He goes on to say “whether the bees in Samson’s dead lion were bred anywhere else no man knoweth.” As an Englishman, more familiar with the possibilities of a dead calf than with those of a dead lion, he declines to commit himself to an opinion as to what is or is not possible in far distant lands over sea.

The strange association of ideas that we have seen in many other instances may be well seen again in the notion that if one pounds up those luminous creatures of the night, glowworms, the result will be an ink that will render any writing performed by its aid visible in the dark. Winstanley, in his “Pathway to Knowledge,” gives a simple receipt for the manufacture of this useful ink, and other writers are content to copy him, or each other, in the laudable desire to spread abroad the knowledge of this luminous fluid. One can easily realize that such a preparation might at times be really very useful.

Turning, in conclusion, our attention to the creatures of sea and stream, we at once encounter the favourite mediæval theory that all creatures of the land had their marine counterparts. “There is nothing,” says the comparatively modern writer, Camden, “bred in any part of Nature, but the same is in the sea;” while Olaus Magnus affirms that “there be fishes like to dogs, cows, calves, horses, eagles, dragons, and what not.” These mysterious denizens of the deep were an unfailing resource in the romances and poems of the Middle Ages, and an article of faith with the writers on natural history. On the Assyrian slabs we see the monster “upward man and downward fish,” while the mermaid we all recognize as a most familiar instance of the presence of creatures at least semi-human in the broad and mysterious expanse of ocean. Bœwulf, the Saxon poet, writes of “the sea-wolf of the abyss, the mighty sea-woman.” The quotation is not altogether complimentary in its sentiment: no lady of one’s acquaintance would feel flattered on being addressed as a sea-wolf. But while a certain halo of romance has in these later days gathered round the idea of the mermaid, those who really believed in her gave her credit for deeds considerably more heinous than combing her flowing hair in the sunlight, since her beauty was a snare and destruction to all who came within its fatal influence.

Sir Thomas Browne, in his merciless dissection of the vulgar beliefs of his day, writes, with his accustomed quaintness and equally accustomed sound common sense, “that all Animals of the Land are in their kinde in the Sea, although received as a Principle, is a tenet very questionable and that will admit of restraint. For some in the Sea are not to be matcht by any enquiry at Land and hold those shapes which terrestrious formes approach not, as may be observed in the Moonfish and the severall sorts of Raias, Torpedos, Oysters, and many more, and some there are in the Land which were never mentioned to be in Sea, as Panthers, Hyænas, Cammells, Molls, and others, which carry no name in Ichthology, nor are to be found in the exact descriptions of Rondoletius, Gesner, and Aldrovandus. Again, though many there be which make out their nominations, as the Sea-serpents and others, yet there are also very many that bear the names of Animalls at Land, which hold no resemblance in corporall configuration, wherein while some are called the Fox, the Dog, or Frog-fish, and are known by common names with those at Land, as their describers attest, they receive not these appellations from a totall similitude in figure, but any concurrence in common accidents, in colour, condition, or single conformation. As for Sea-Horses, which much confirm this assertion in their common descriptions, they are but Grotesco delineations which fill up empty spaces in Maps, and meer pictoriall inventions, not any Physicall shapes. That which the Ancients named Hippocampus is a little animall about six inches long, and not preferred beyond the classis of Insects. That they termed Hippopotamus, an amphibious animall about the River Nile, so little resembleth an horse that, except the feet, it better makes out a swine. Although it be not denied that some in the water doe carry a justifiable resemblance to some at Land, yet are the major part which bear their names unlike, nor doe they otherwise resemble the creatures on earth than they on earth the constellations which passe under Animall names in heaven: nor the Dogfish at Sea much more make out the Dog of the Land than that his cognominall or namesake in the heavens.” He then goes on to show that this belief restrains Omnipotence and abridges the variety of creation, making the creatures of one element but a counterpart of the other.

This belief in sea-monsters of all kinds was naturally not a chance that a man like Aldrovandus could miss. He gives his imagination full scope, or perhaps we should rather say his credulity, as he introduces these creatures to us as things as real as a rabbit; his sea-monk, for instance, with tonsured human head, arms replaced by fins, and legs by fishy tail, being as matter of fact as one’s vicar. Fig. 25 is given by him in all good faith as the true presentment of a sea-bishop, though not at all our notion of a bishop in his see. The right hand, it will be seen, is giving the benediction. The dragon of the deep, shown in fig. 26, aims at being terrible, but merely succeeds in being feeble. We cannot but feel that the draughtsman here failed to reach our ideal; for one has certainly seen, many representations of land-dragons far more fear-inspiring than this bloated monster with ears like a King Charles spaniel, and tail like a rat. This illustration is from another source, the work of Ambrosinus on the same subject, published “permissu superiorum” in the year 1642. While the book is as quaint and grotesque as any of its rivals, the skill of the artist has in divers cases not paralleled the gifts of description of the author.

The “monstrosus sus marinus,” or terrible sow of the sea, or more especially perhaps of Aldrovandus (fig. 27), will surely fully come up to everyone’s expectation of what a marine pig should be like. Catching a weasel asleep should be a comparatively easy task to circumventing sus marinus; it seems such a peculiarly wide-awake animal. Possibly in the struggle for existence in the watery depths its toothsome flesh may place it in jeopardy, and Nature may have bestowed upon it these numerous eyes to enable it to evade dragons and other foes having a penchant for pork; a rather unexpected addition to the various better-known examples of that comfortable doctrine for the well-to-do, the survival of the fittest.

Purchas tells us of a fish called the Angulo or Hog-fish. “It hath,” he says, “as it were two hands, and a tail like a target, which eateth like pork, and whereof they make lard, and it hath not the savour or taste of fish. It feedeth on the grasse that groweth on the banks of the river and never goeth out; it hath a mouthe like the mozell of an ox, and there be of them that weigh five hundred pound a piece.” This is found, he tells us, in the River Congo.

Another of the strange creatures of ocean is shown in fig. 28. It is somewhat startling to reflect that our ancestors had at least the expectation that such a monster might at any moment rise alongside their vessel and address them in the peremptory tones that the figure suggests: and it must be borne in mind that these illustrations are not a tithe of the strange imaginings that even this one old book sets forth, though it is needless to multiply examples from it. We have carefully drawn our figures in facsimile from the originals, and have naught extenuated, nor set down aught in malice. They are fairly typical examples of the sort of thing that is encountered on page after page.

In the excellent book of Rondeletius (doctoris medici et medicinæ in schola monspeliensi professoris regii), published in the year 1554, on the subject of marine fishes, the illustrations are full of spirit and life. Amongst these fish of the ocean we find the sea-bishop, sea-monk, &c., all over again, and such creatures as the sea-lion, fig. 29; this latter, except for his scaly hide, has nothing very suggestively aquatic about him. The book, in addition to such impossibilities, contains very good and life-like representations of the sun-fish, sturgeon, hammer-headed shark, ray, and many others.

The author of the “Speculum Mundi” confirms all these wonders, and adds his quota to the general store. He affirms that, “In the year 1526 there was taken in Norway, neare to a seaport called Elpoch, a certain fish resembling a mitred bishop, who was kept alive six days after his taking, and there was, as the author of Du Bartas his summarie reporteth, one Ferdinand Alvares, Secretarie to the storehouse of the Indians, who faithfully witnesseth that he had seene not farre off from the Promontorie of the Moon, a young Sea-man coming out of the Waters, who stole fishes from the fishermen and ate them raw. Neither is Olaus Magnus silent on these things, for he also saith there be monsters in the sea, as it were imitating the shape of a man, having a dolefull kinde of sounde or singing. There be also sea-men of an absolute proportion in their whole body; these are sometimes seene to climbe up the ships in the night times, and suddenly to depresse that part upon which they sit; and if they abide long the whole ship sinketh. Yea (saithe he), this I adde from the faithfull assertions of the Norway fishers, that when such are taken, if they be not presently let go again, there ariseth such a fierce tempest, with an horrid noise of those kinde of creatures and other sea-monsters there assembled, that a man would think the verie heaven were falling, and the vaulted roofe of the world running to ruine, insomuch that the fishermen have much ado to escape with their lives; whereupon they confirmed it as a law amongst them that if any chanced to hang such a fish upon his hook he should suddenly cut the line and let him go on. But these sudden tempests are very strange, and how they arise with such violent speed exceeds the bounds of ordinary admiration. Whereupon it is again supposed that these monsters are verie devils, and by their power such strange storms are raised. Howbeit for my part I think otherwise, and do much rather affirm that these storms, in my judgment, are thus raised, namely, by the thickening and breaking of the aire; which the snortling, rushing, and howling of these beasts, assembled in an innumerable companie, causeth. For it is certain that sounds will break and alter the aire (as I have heard it of a citie freed from the plague by the thundering noise of cannons), and also I suppose that the violent rushing of these beasts causeth much water to flie up and thicken the aire, and by their howling and snortling under the waters they do blow up, and as it were attenuate the waves, and make them arise in a thinner substance than at other times; so that Nature, having all these helps, in an instant worketh to the amazement of the mariners, and often to the danger of their lives. Besides, shall we think that spirits use to feed, and will be so foolish as to go and hang themselves on an hook for a bait? They may have occult properties (as the loadstone hath) to work strange feats, and yet be neither spirits nor devils; for experience likewise teacheth that they die sooner or later after their taking, neither can a spirit have flesh and bones as they have.”

The monsters of the deep are best seen at the times of the equinox, “for then,” says Pliny, “by the whirlwinds, rains and tempests which rush with violence from the rugged mountains, the seas are turned up from the very bottom, and thus the billows roll and raise these beasts out of the deep parts of the ocean.” It certainly seems a much more reasonable theory that the storms produce the beasts than that the beasts produce the storms.

On an antique seal we remember to have seen a sea-elephant, a creature having the forelegs, tusks, trunk, and great flapping ears of the African elephant, yet terminating in the body of a fish, and duly furnished with piscine tail and fins. This outrageous combination would seem to indicate the limit possible to absurdity in this direction. When the ancient writers would desire to people the vast unknown of air and sea, their thoughts naturally turned to those creatures of the land with which they were more familiar. Hence, the denizens of the air or ocean are not really creations at all, but adaptations, wings or fins being added to horses, lions and the like, according to the new element in which they were to figure. Of these the sea-horses that drew the chariot of Neptune through the waves, or the winged steed Pegasus, are examples that at once occur to one’s mind.

The sea-horse according to some authorities is found floating on the ice between Britain and Norway, and is taken by the whalers for the oil he contains. He is described as having a head like a horse, and as sometimes neighing, but his hoofs are said to be cloven like those of a cow, while his hinder parts are those of a fish. This creature would appear to be now quite lost to science. The sea-horse naturally suggests the idea of the sea-unicorn, depicted as of equine form, but having the hinder parts piscine in character. The horn of the sea-unicorn occasionally brought home by merchants and mariners was probably the “sword” of the swordfish or the tusk of the narwhal, as it is often mentioned that it was able to penetrate the ribs of ships, and later experience has proved that an encounter between swordfish or narwhal and ships has occasionally taken place. The tusk of the narwhal is a spiral tapering rod of ivory, sometimes attaining to the length of eight or ten feet. Purchas mentions a horn of a sea-unicorn that was presented by Frobisher to his sovereign, and preserved at Windsor, and the name of this great arctic voyager naturally suggests that this horn was the tusk of a narwhal, a creature of the northern seas. One old writer speaks of the horn as a “wreathy spire,” a description which admirably accords with the narwhal tusk. The fact once established that there were creatures in the sea with horns like unicorns, it was at once assumed that they had the horse-like form assigned to the land-unicorn, and in some of the old authors the sea-unicorn is represented as of purely equine form, plus the horn.

In a book published in 1639, entitled “A Helpe to Memorie and Discourse,” we find this question asked, “Whether doth a dead body in a shippe cause the shippe to sail slower, and if it doe, what is thought to be the reason thereof?” The answer to the query is that “the shippe is as insensible of the living as the dead, and as the living make it goe the faster, so the dead make it not goe the slower; for the dead are no Rhemoras to alter the course of her passage, though some there be that thinke so, and that by a kind of mournful sympathy.” The potent influence of the remora or sucking-fish to arrest the progress of a ship by merely adhering to its keel is a curious fancy that has been handed on for centuries. Pliny and many other ancient writers had full belief in this foe to the mariner, and references to it in much more recent authors are by no means uncommon. Thus Ben Jonson alludes to it in the lines—

“I say a remora, For it will stay a ship that’s under sail.”

While Spenser in his “Visions of the World’s Vanity,” writes—

“Looking far forth into the ocean wide, A goodly ship, with banners bravely dight, And flag in her top-gallant I espied, Through the main sea making her merry flight: Fair blew the wind into her bosom right, And th’ Heavens looked lovely all the while That she did seem to dance, as in delight, And at her own felicity did smile: All suddenly there clove unto her keel A little fish that we call remora, Which stopt her course, and held her by the heel, That wind nor tide could move her thence away.”

We may indeed be thankful that this mysterious power, worse even than the more prosaic barnacles and other sea impedimenta that plague the modern shipowner by fouling the bottom of his good ship, and so retarding her course, seems to be no longer exercised. The merchantman speeding home with perishable cargo, the yachtsman burning to carry off the challenge cup, the great record-breaking Atlantic liner, carrying under heavy penalty for delay Her Majesty’s mails, would all be terribly hampered in their several ambitions in presence of so potent yet so apparently insignificant a foe. Well might Spenser add—

“Strange thing meseemeth that so small a thing Should able be so great an one to wring.”

One old writer feeling the impossibility of giving a satisfactory explanation of the marvel is content to say “of which there can be no more reason given than of the loadstone drawing iron; neither is it possible to shew the cause of all secrets in Nature,” a statement as true to-day as the day it was written, though this particular secret of Nature has in the interval been disestablished.

That the dolphin was the swiftest of all living creatures, more rapid than a bird, swifter than an arrow shot from a bow, will probably be an entirely new idea to most of our readers, yet such was the ancient belief. The dolphin occurs very freely in blazonry, on ancient coinage, and in classic and renaissance decoration, and it is almost always represented either as “embowed,” that is to say, bent round like a bow, such being the significance of the heraldic term, or else it is introduced with its lithe body coiled gracefully round an anchor or trident. In either case the representation suggests an easy-going and leisurely state of affairs that is very different to the picture conjured up by the arrowy rush of the creature through the waves, as Pliny paints it for us.

It is a very old belief that the dolphin has an especial fondness for man. “Of a man he is nothing afraid, neither avoideth from him as a stranger: but of himselfe meeteth their ships, plaieth and disporteth himselfe, and fetcheth a thousand friskes, and gambols before them. He will swimme along by the mariners, as it were for a wager, who should make way most speedily, and alwaies outgoeth them, saile they with never so good a forewind.” The representation of the dolphin with the anchor is not simply a type of maritime supremacy, but is a distinct illustration of this belief in the dolphin’s kindly regard for man. Thus Camerarius asserts that “when tempests arise, and sea-men cast their anchor, the dolphin, from its love to man, twines itself round it, and directs it, so that it may more safely lay hold of the ground.”

The works of the ancient writers abound with illustrations of the friendly regard of the dolphin for mankind. Thus in one wonderful story we have a schoolboy, the son of a poor man, who had to travel each day from Baianum to Puteoli, who used at the water’s edge to call a dolphin to his aid. The dolphin would at once respond to the call, and the boy used to mount upon his back and be taken across the sea, and be brought back again at night. This went on for some years, and at last, when the boy fell sick and died, his constitution probably not being able to stand the constant wetting and exposure, the dolphin was inconsolable, and promptly died of a broken heart. In another story, equally veracious, the rider was so unfortunate as to pierce himself with one of the sharp spines of the dorsal fin, and an artery being severed, he bled to death. The dolphin, seeing the water stained with blood, and finding that his rider did not sit on his back in the light and active way that had been his wont, concluded that some catastrophe had happened, and when he realized the full truth, resolved not to outlive him whom he had affectionately loved, and therefore ran himself with all his might upon the shore, and so perished. Pliny, Mecænas, Fabianus, Flavius Alfius, Ælian, Aulus Gellius, Apion, Egesidemus, Theophrastus, and many other old writers, all give equally surprising illustrations of this wonderful love of the dolphin for mankind.

The dolphin is also a great lover of music, and equally wonderful stories are told in illustration of this taste also. Another well-known belief in connection with it is the imaginary brilliancy of its changeful colours when dying. The idea has been a favourite one with poets in all ages: an example from Byron’s “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” will suffice as an illustration:—

“Parting day Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues With a new colour as it gasps away; The last still loveliest, till ’tis gone, and all is gray.”

Another strange fish believed in by our forefathers was the Acipenser, “a fish of an unnatural making and quality,” as an old writer terms him; and indeed he may very well do so, as we are told that “his scales are all turned towards his head.” We are not therefore much surprised to learn that “he ever swimmeth against the stream,” though we might well be more astonished if we ever found him swimming at all.

The amiable dolphin stands not alone in its friendship with man. The ray too, if we may believe a mediæval authority, is “a loving fish to man: for swimming in the waters, and being greedily pursued by the devouring Sea-dogs, the Ray defends him, and will not leave him untill he be out of danger.” Sometimes the friendship is with some other creature; thus Porta gives an unfailing recipe for catching a sargon, whatever that may be, by taking advantage of this kindly trait in its character. “The Sargi,” he declares, “love Goats unmeasurably: and they are so mad after them that when so much as the shadow of a Goat that feeds neer the shore shall appear neer unto them they presently leap for joy and swim to it in haste, and they imitate the goats, though they are not fit to leap, and thus they delight to come unto them. They are, therefore, catcht by those things that they so much desire. Whereupon the Fisher, putting on a Goat’s skin with the horns, lies in wait for them, having the Sunne behind his back and paste made wet with the decoction of Goat’s flesh: this he casts into the Sea where the Sargi are to come: and they, as if they were charmed, run to it, and are much delighted with the sight of the Goat’s skin and feed on the paste. Thus the Fishermen catcheth abundance of them.” Porta gives no suggestion that this affection is reciprocal.

Another mediæval writer has a still more extraordinary story of the kind, and in this case it is pleasant to know that the loving feeling is mutual. “Amongst the severall sort of shell fishes,” saith he, “the glistering Pearl-fish deserves remembrance, not only in respect of herself but also in regard of the Prawn, another fish and her companion: for between these two there is a most firm league of friendship, much kindnesse, and such familiaritie as cannot but breed admiration in the reader. They have a subtill kinde of hunting, which being ended, they divide their prey in loving manner: for seeing they one help the other in the getting of it, they likewise joyn in the equall sharing. And, in few words, thus it is—when the Pearl-fish gapeth wide, she hath a curious glistering within her shell, by which she allureth her small fry to come swimming unto her: which when her companion the Prawn perceiveth, he gives her a secret touch with one of his prickles, wherupon she shuts her gaping shell, and so incloseth her wished prey: then (as I said) they equally share them out and feed themselves. And thus, day by day, they get their livings, like a combined knot of cheaters, who have no other trade than the cunning deceit of quaint consenage: hooking in the simpler sort with such subtill tricks, that be their purses stuft with either more or less, they know a way to sound the bottome and send them lighter home: lighter in purse, though heavier in heart.” The moral seems perhaps needlessly severe, and we trust that henceforth our readers, after reading this romance of the deep, will have a kindlier feeling for these faithful friends, the artful oyster and the watchful prawn. The only drawback to the sentiment of the thing seems to be that this loving alliance has a somewhat low motive as its basis. One at least of the partners is capable of a more tender passion, as we have the authority of Sheridan for saying that an oyster may be crossed in love.

Olaus Magnus gives an awful example of voracity in the swam-fish, one of the most greedy cravens of the denizens of the sea, and cites many stories of it that amply justify the bad character bestowed on it. Another old writer affirms that when danger threatens “he will so winde up himselfe and cover his head with the skinne and substance of his own body that he is then bent like unto a piece of dead fish, and nothing like himself.” The plan however appears to have its drawbacks, as the venerable and veracious author goes on to say that this feat “he seldome doth without hurt or damage, for still fearing that there be those about him who will prey upon him and devoure him, he is compelled for lack of meat to feed upon the substance of his own body, choosing rather to be devoured in part than to be consumed by other more strong and powerful fishes”—at best a most painful alternative.

In the account of the Creation the forming of the whale is specially dwelt upon: “And God created great whales and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind.” Luther, commenting on this, says that the creation of whales is specified by name, lest affrighted with their greatness we should believe them to be only visions or fancies. Though later commentators have decided that the leviathan of the Bible is the crocodile, it was long held to be the whale. Milton, in the first book of the “Paradise Lost,” writes of that sea beast—

“Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the ocean stream,”

and the Jews had a legend that the first whales were so immense in bulk, so formidable in attack, so voracious, that there was considerable risk of their overtoppling the rest of creation; so while as yet there were but two of them in existence, one was destroyed in order that the race might not be continued and the general balance of Nature upset.

Our ancestors found apt moral against the scornful in the reason assigned for the mouth of the flounder being on one side. It appears that at one time the flounder’s mouth was as fair to see as any other, but that it lost all its beauty through contemptuous flouting of the herring, and it has borne this evil mark of its jealousy ever since, and will probably so bear it to the end of time. At the vague date known as once upon a time we are told that all the fishes of the sea assembled to choose a king, and that the herring was elected to this dignified position. The flounder, on account of his red spots and other features that were evidently more appreciated by himself than by the main body of electors, had strong hope that he should himself be chosen, and the unlovely grimace with which he saluted his sovereign was, as a judgment upon him, made a fixture for all time as a punishment to himself and a warning to others.

The tench was commonly called the physician, for it was believed by our forefathers that when the other fish were in any way hurt and required the aid of surgeon or physician, they healed themselves by rubbing against the tench, finding the slime of his body to be a “soveraigne salve” for their needs. For the sufferings of humanity the beasts, birds, and plants appear to have supplied a sufficient materia medica, and the less accessible creatures of the waters were but rarely pressed into the mediæval pharmacopœia. The blood of the eel was rubbed upon unwelcome warts, and a cruel remedy for bad eyes, the cruelty being, as we have seen over and over again in those old remedies, by no means an exceptional feature, was to capture a crab alive, cut out its eyes and then let it go. The eyes were then bound upon the neck of the man, woman, or child, and a satisfactory result was speedily anticipated, though very possibly not so speedily forthcoming.

The Cuttle fish is scarcely one’s ideal of beauty, yet it is by its vanity and belief in its personal attractions that it is most readily captured. Porta tells us that pieces of looking glass are let down by the fishermen into the waters, and that the Cuttle seeing his image reflected, clasps the glass around, and while he is still enamoured with the reflection of his charms is drawn to the surface by the wily fishermen. In the “Pathway to Knowledge,” published in the year 1685, we are told that if we take the juice of Nettles and Houseleek, and anoint our hands therewith, the fish will gather round and “you may take them out at your pleasure.” This seems almost as simple a method as the catching of birds by placing a pinch of salt on their tails.

If we may credit Maundevile, and the “if” is a most important point, in one favoured land instead of the people going for the fish, the fish come to the people. In a certain isle, or we may perhaps more truthfully say an uncertain isle, called Calonak, many wonderful things were to be seen, but one of these he especially, and very justly, calls “a gret Marvayle,” and when he goes on to add that “it is more to speke of than in ony partie of the World,” one is loath to gainsay his opinion. He tells us that “alle manere of Fissches that ther ben in the See abouten hem, comen ones in the Yeer, eche manere of dyverse Fissches, one maner of kynde aftre another; and thei casten hem selfe to the See Banke of that Yle in so gret plentee and multitude that no man may see but Fissche, and ther thei abyden thre dayes, and euerie man of the Countree takethe of hem als many as him lykethe, and that maner of Fissche aftre the thridde day departeth and gothe in to the See. And aftre hem comen another multitude of Fissches of anothre kynde and don in the same maner as the firste diden othre three dayes. And aftre hem another, tille alle the dyverse maner of Fissches have ben there, and that men have taken of hem that hem lykethe. And no man knowethe the cause wherfore it may ben. But thei of the Contree seyn that it is for to do reverence to here Kyng, that is the most worthi Kyng that is in the World, as thei seyn.” The reason assigned for the king’s special worthiness is a somewhat peculiar one, and though it is duly set forth at full length by the old author, other times have brought other manners and ideas, and one can scarcely insert in a book of the present day many things, and this amongst them, that were set forth in the greatest simplicity and directness of language in books of earlier date.

At all events this “most worthie Kyng” was so far under the special care of Providence that “God sendethe him so the Fissches of dyverse kyndes, of all that ben in the See, to be taken at his wille, for him and alle his peple. And therfore all the Fissches of the See comen to make him homage as the most noble and excellent Kyng of the World, and that is best beloved of God as thei seyn.” Well may Maundevile say, as he realized the idea of the various finny tribes of Ocean thus sacrificing themselves in so orderly a sequence, that “this me semethe is the most merveylle that evere I saughe. For this mervaylle is agenst kynde, that the Fissches that have fredom to environe all the Costes of the See at here owne list comen of hire owne wille to profren hem to the dethe with outen constreynynge of man.” It must have been an immense convenience to have known thus readily what was in season, and even if in this Hobson’s choice of diet one did not happen to be very partial to plaice or conger, there was always the happy knowledge that next Tuesday or possibly Thursday week, soles or turbot would be “in.” We may conclude that a fresh series of herrings, mackerel, or whatever they might be, would come ashore on each one of the three days that they were due, or by the termination of that period they would certainly all be smelt.

After this great marvel the cruel pontarf that beguiled children away to sport with them and finally to eat them, the silurus that at the rising of the dog-star is struck insensible, the dead crabs that turn to scorpions, the eels that rub themselves against stones, and, in so doing, scrape off fragments that come to life, and are the only cause and means of their increase, the fish that swim in the boiling water of some tropical stream that is now unknown, all sink as wonders into insignificance.

The whole world has now been so ransacked that there is little room in these times for the imagination to play; but in mediæval days travellers brought back such wonderful stories, some of them true, and others, perhaps, a little wanting in that respect, of the things that they had seen, that almost anything seemed a possibility. Of this our present pages may be considered some little indication, though it will be abundantly evident that we have not used up one hundredth part of the great store of folk-lore and ancient and mediæval science that is open to investigation.

FOOTNOTES

The title pages of these old books should by no means be overlooked, as they are often full of interest and meaning. In the one before us we have at the top the Hebrew name for Jehovah within an equilateral triangle, and this again within a circle of rays. On one side is the sun shining in full splendour, on the other the moon and stars. From the triangle issues a narrow track that broadens as it goes, and finally returns to the triangle, its point of emergence being marked Alpha and the point of re-entry Omega. In the centre of this track is the world being rolled along by the foot of Time. On one side is a sitting figure, Theologia, book on knee, and having the tables of the law in one hand, and in the other a lantern, and on the other we find “Philosophia” with globe and compasses.

The titles of many of these old books are sufficiently quaint and striking. Sometimes a spade is called a spade with the most startling directness; while at others the title is a mystical conceit that needs interpretation. The following are some few that we have come across:—“The flaming sword of Justice unsheathed,” “Matches lighted at the Divine Fire,” “The shop of the Spiritual Apothecary,” “The Scraper of Vanity, a Spiritual Pillow necessary to exterpate Vice and to plant Virtue.” There would appear to be here some little confusion of metaphor: anyone desiring to plant anything would scarcely find a pillow a serviceable tool for the purpose.

Culver is derived from the Anglo-Saxon culfre, a pigeon. The Culver cliffs in the Isle of Wight are so called from the great numbers of wild pigeons that nest there, while the Columbine, Lat. Columba, a pigeon, so named from the resemblance of its flowers to a ring of birds, is also known as the Culverwort.

Thus we find a Strasburg copy dated 1484; Bologna, 1488; Venice, 1491; Florence, 1492; Antwerp, 1494; Venice again, 1496; Milan, 1497; another Bologna edition, 1497; and so on.

The Emperor Titus Vespasian, to whom the book was dedicated.

“I conceive it,” he says, “to be courteous, and to indicate an ingenious modesty, to acknowledge the source whence we have derived assistance, and not act as most of those have done whom I have examined. For I must inform you that in consulting various authors I have discovered that some of the most grave and of the latest writers, have transcribed word for word, from former works without making any acknowledgment.”

He only used one pen throughout, a circumstance which he deemed sufficiently remarkable to be celebrated in these lines which are prefixed to his book:—

“With one sole pen I wrote this book, Made of a grey goose quill. A pen it was when I it took, A pen I leave it still.”

“I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love reading.”—Macaulay. Sir John Herschell in like manner tells us—“Were I to pay for a taste that should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me during life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste for reading. Give a man this taste and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making him a happy man; unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selection of books. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history—with the wisest, the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all ages. The world has been created for him.” But we must bear in mind, while we subscribe to the dictum of Carlyle, “Of all things which men do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books,” the wise line of Shakespeare: “Learning is but an adjunct to oneself,” lest haply we be classed with “the bookful blockhead” of Pope—ignorantly read, “with loads of learned lumber in his head.”

There are separate maps for the leading countries, giving towns, rivers, forests, mountains, and other features. The towns are not only named, but have actual buildings represented. We notice that in the map of Germany “Holand” and “Flandria” are at the bottom right-hand corner, but this arises from the reversal of the whole thing, the north being at the bottom of the page instead of the top. It is as Germany would look if we imagine the point of view in Southern Denmark. Italy in the same way shows Venice at the bottom of the map and Sicily at the top. In the description of Spain the so-called pillars of Hercules are treated as two actual pillars and in the illustration look very like two pawns from a set of chessmen.

His accounts were at the time considered so incredible, that the Venetians gave him the sobriquet of “Millioni,” from the frequent recurrence of millions in his statements; and amongst other traducers Herbert says that “Geographers have filled their maps and globes with the names of Tenduc, Tangutt, Tamfur, Cando, Camul, and other hobgobling words obtruded upon the World by those three arrant Monks, Haython, Marc Parc the Venetian, and Vartoman, who fearing no imputations make strange discoveries as well as descriptions of places.” This from the sea-monsterist of the Azores!

Ferdinand Mendez Pinto was a celebrated Portuguese navigator, who published a description of his travels of so marvellous a nature that his name became a synonym for extravagant fiction. We meet with him, for instance, in Congreve’s play of “Love for Love,” where the passage occurs: “Ferdinand Mendez Pinto was but a type of thee, thou liar of the first magnitude.”

“Beefe is a good meate for an Englysshe man, so be it the beest be yonge, and that it be not kowe-flesshe: for olde beefe and kowe-flesshe doth ingender melancholye and leperouse humoures. Yf it be moderatly powderyd, that the groose blode by salte may be exhaustyd it doth make an Englysshe man stronge.”—Andrew Boorde’s “Dyetary.”

There can be little question but that the ancient fictions of satyrs, cynocephali and other supposed monstrous forms of humanity arose in vague accounts of different species of apes.

“Marking the tracts of air, the clamorous cranes Wheel their due flight in varied ranks descried; And each with outstretched neck his rank maintains In marshalled order through the ethereal void.”

The word is spelt sometimes as pigmy, and at others as pygmy; the latter is the more correct, as the word is from the Greek name for them, the pygmaioi.

These great anthropoid apes are found in the forests that extend southward for a thousand miles or so from the gulf of Guinea. The gorilla is not found beyond this limit.

Burton probably got this notion from Megasthenes, an old writer who, not to be outdone in the introduction of the marvellous, tells us of a nation in the extreme East of India that are wholly mouthless, and that live only by the smells that they draw in at their nostrils, partaking of no food whatever, but flourishing on the pleasant odours given off by various roots, blossoms, and fruits that they are careful to carry about with them when travelling. Unfortunately, if the scent be too strong it deprives them of life and they die as effectually of a surfeit of good things as the famous British sovereign who overdid his devotion to lamprey stew.

These doubtless would be some of the larger apes, that, sufficiently human in general form to suggest the notion of a man, drop upon their fore-paws and travel across the open spaces of the forest as quadrupeds.

“Who would believe that there were mountaineers, Dewlapped like bulls, whose throats had hanging at them Wallets of flesh? Or that there were such men Whose heads stood in their breasts?”

GONZALE in the “Tempest.”

Robertson, in his “History of America,” Vol. II., p. 525, says of the Spaniards, “that they and their horses were objects of the greatest astonishment to all the people of New Spain. At first they imagined the horse and his rider, like the centaurs of the ancients, to be some monstrous animal of a terrible form. Even after they had discovered the mistake they believed the horses devoured men in battle, and when they neighed, thought that they were demanding their prey.”

In the “Eastern Travels of John of Hesse,” amongst perils of voyage, we read:—“We came to a stony mountain, where we heard syrens singing, meermaids who draw ships into danger by their songs. We saw there many horrible monsters and were in great fear.”

As the old adage hath it:—

“When that the ass begins to bray, Be sure we shall have rain that day.”

“A maiden strangely fair, but strangely formed, Rises from out the pool, and by her songs And heavenly beauty lures to shameful death The luckless wight who hears her melodies.”—Kirke.

Allusive to Mary Queen of Scots and to the Duke of Norfolk, and the Earls of Westmoreland and Northumberland, who fell from their allegiance to Elizabeth by the witchery of Mary. She was celebrated for the melody of her singing. The reference to the dolphin alludes to her marriage with the Dauphin of France.

See some good figures, too, in the “Book of Emblems” of Alciatus, 1551.

A writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine, in the year 1771, says of Browne’s book on “Vulgar Errors,” “Of all the books recommended to our youth after their academical studies, I do not know a better than this of Sir Thomas’s to excite their curiosity, to put them upon thinking and inquiring, and to guard them against taking anything upon trust from opinion and authority. His language has, indeed, a little air of affectation which is apt to disgust young persons, and it would be doing a very great service to that class if some gentlemen of learning would take the pains to smooth and adapt it a little more to modern ears,”—a comment which we do not at all endorse, as the individual style of the old writer has a quaint charm of its own.

“There is scarce any tradition or popular error but stands also delivered by some good authors, who though excellent and usefull, yet being merely transcriptive, or following common relations, their accounts are not to be swallowed at large, or entertained without a prudent circumspection. In whome the ipse dixit, though it be no powerfull argument in any, is yet lesse authentick than in many others, because they deliver not their own experiences, but others’ affirmations.”—Browne.

“Dagon his name, sea-monster, upward man, and downward, fish.”—Milton.

A very similar figure may be seen amongst the designs of the mosaic pavements at the Roman villa discovered at Brading.

Agriopas tells a gruesome story of a man who, at the sacrifice of a human being to the gods, surreptitiously tasted a piece of the flesh and was turned into a wolf. Whether as a punishment for his cannibalism, or because by abstracting a portion of the victim he was sacrilegiously robbing the altar, we are not informed.

Such hallucinations are often very contagious. A nun in a large convent got the idea into her head that she was a cat, and began to mew. Shortly afterwards other nuns also mewed, until at last the great majority of them were mewing for hours at a time. The matter got to the ears of the town authorities, and on the removal of the monomaniac and the promise of a good whipping to anyone who mewed again, the concert at once died out.

“There is a book, De Mirabilibus narrationibus, written by Antigonus, another also of the same title by Trallianus, which make good the promise of their titles, and may be read with caution, which if any man shall likewise observe in the Lecture of Philostratus, or not only in ancient Writers but shall carry a wary eye on Paulus Venetus, Olaus Magnus, and many another, I think his circumspection laudable, and he may hereby decline occasion of Error.”—Browne.

The first edition of Scot’s book was published in the year 1584.

“The Lion is not so fierce as painted.”—Thos. Fuller.

“The Lion is not so fierce as they paint him.”—Herbert.

“A lion being sick of a quartane Ague eats and devours Apes, and so is healed; hence we know that Apes’ blood is good against an ague.”—Porta.

A much later writer, Porta, includes some strange animals in his treatise: thus the leopard is the offspring, according to him, of the panther and lioness: the crocuta of the hyæna and lioness; the thoes of the panther and the wolf; the jumar of the bull and ass; the musinus of the goat and ram; the cinirus of the he-goat and ewe. The figures of-these are sufficiently curious.

“However erroneous it may now be considered, the theory of creation held during the Middle Ages, was both beautiful and noble, and in a fairly accurate manner may be summarized as follows: On the fall of the tenth legion of the citizens of heaven, God resolved to create man to take the place of the fallen angels. He evolved this world for the home of the new creation, and all things that He then made. The celestial bodies, the vegetable and animal kingdoms were formed solely and entirely for man alone, as the centre round which the whole of creation revolved. There was no idea then that the world in which man was placed formed only one of many such inhabited homes, and that our sphere was simply an insignificant fragment of a vast universe. The celestial bodies, it was held, were created not only to give light and heat to generate metals and precious stones, but to govern the affairs of men, and enable them to foretell events. The vegetable kingdom was to furnish food and medicine not only for man’s body but likewise for his mind. Lastly, the animal creation provided him with servants, with food for his bodily wants, and with moral lessons and examples for those of his soul. This I venture to advance as a tolerably accurate summary of the theory of creation held during the Middle Ages and until nearly the close of the seventeenth century, and, if correct, it will appear from it that each part of creation was viewed not only in an outward and material manner, but also in an interior and spiritual one.”—André.

“De leonibus, quaram copia est in Africa.” The illustration is a facsimile of the one given in this section of Munster’s book.

Bussy D’Amboise, 1607, writes—

“An angry unicorne in his full career Charged with too swift a foot a jeweller That watch’d him for the treasure of his brow, And ere he could get shelter of a tree Nail’d him with his rich antler to the earth.”

Ctesias says that its flesh is so bitter that it cannot be eaten.

“Topsell nameth two kingdomes in India (the one called Niem, the other Lamber), which he likewise stored with them.”—Speculum Mundi.

As for example: Bacci’s book “Discorso dell’ Alicorno,” published at Florence in 1573, and the “De Unicornu Observationes novæ” of Thomas Bartholinus, bearing date 1645. Caspar Bartholinus had already, in 1628, written “De Unicornu ejusque affinibus.” Then we have Bereus’ “De Monoceroti,” 11667; Catelan’s “Histoire de la Licorne,” 1624; Frenzel, “De Unicornu,” 1675; Stolbergk’s “Exercitatio de Unicornu,” 1652; Sachs’ “Monocerologia,” 1676; and the “Notice en refutation de la non-existence de la Licorne” of Laterrade, bearing the very recent date of 1826.

Mutianus tells us that when the moon is on the wane the monkeys are sad, but that they adore the new moon with liveliest manifestations of delight.

“When trauaylers are out of their way the Oliphaunt will do all that hee can by familiar tokens to bring them in again. He is of much vertue and verie seruiceable with loue towardes man.”—Legh. “Even the wilde ones living in deserts will direct and defend strangers and travellers. For if an Elephant shall finde a man wandering in his way, first of all that he may not be affrighted, the Elephant goeth a little wide out of the path and standeth still, then by little and little going before him, he shews him the way; and if a Dragon chance to meet this man thus travelling, the Elephant then opposeth himself to the Dragon and powerfully defendeth the helplesse man who is not able to defend himself.”—Speculum Mundi.

“And to the end they might provoke the elephants to fight they shewed them the blood of grapes and mulberries.”—1 Maccabees vi. 34.

“And upon the beasts there were strong towers of wood, which covered every one of them, and were girt fast unto them with devices; there were also upon every one two and thirty strong men that fought upon them, besides the Indian that ruled him.”—1 Macc. vi. 37.

Miss Cobbe, in discussing the moral difference between the creatures of Fancy and those of Nature, remarks very truly that “the instincts which man has lent to the offspring of his imagination are infinitely worse and lower than those which are to be found in real eagles and tigers, which slay and eat their natural prey to satisfy their hunger, and there make an end. But the perfidious and cruel Sphinxes, and Harpies, and Gorgons, and Gnomes, and Dragons, do mischief for mischief’s sake, and are altogether merciless. The brutes of Fancy are merely brutal, with a spice of human malignity superadded. Man has created filthy Harpies, and relentless Hydras, and subtle and vindictive Sphinxes, but he has never, even in thought, created such an animal as the sagacious and friendly elephant, the kindly-natured horse, or the affectionate dog.”

The panther was one of the beasts that was brought in great numbers to Rome. Pompey, for instance, exhibited to the citizens over four hundred of them on one occasion. The beast is figured in mosaic pavements, in the fresco paintings of Pompeii, &c., and was evidently so well under observation that it is remarkable how such erroneous ideas concerning it could have become current or stood their ground as articles of belief even for a day.

At a state banquet given by Gaston the Fifth we read that “there was brought in (for an enter-course) the shape of a beast called a Tiger, which by cunning art disgorged fire from his mouth and nostrils.”

It is dated 1658. The author was a Neapolitan.

The “Natural Magick” is divided into what is called twenty Books, equivalent really to chapters, and they receive various headings according to their contents, but the twentieth Porta calls “Chaos,” and he explains it by saying: “I determined from the beginning of my Book to unite Experiments that are contained in all Natural Sciences, but by my business that called me off, my mind was hindered, so that I could not accomplish what I attended. Since, therefore, I could not do what I would, I must be willing to do what I can. Therefore, I shut up in this Book those Experiments that could be included in no Classes, which were so diverse and various that they could not make up a Science or a Book; and, therefore, I have here them altogether confusedly as what I had over-passed, and, if God please, I will another time give you a more perfect Book. Now you must rest content with these.”

We see this notion so lately as in a book entitled “An English Expositour,” issued in 1680 by John Hayes, Printer to the University of Cambridge.

The northern peoples believed also in an enormous wolf, called Fernris, who was the offspring of Loki, the evil principle. This creature until the end of the world would be the cause of unnumbered ills to humanity, but at the crack of doom would, after a fearful struggle, be vanquished by the Gods, and a reign of universal peace would succeed his overthrow.

“Wherefore, studious Readers, accept my long Labours, that cost me much Study, Travel, Expense, and much Inconvenience, with the same Mind that I publish them; and remove all Blindness and Malice, which are wont to dazle the sight of the Minde, and hinder the Truth; weigh these Things with a right Judgement when you try what I have Written, for finding both Truth and Profit, you will (it may be) think better of my Pains.”—End of the Preface to Porta’s “Natural Magick.”

In Dryden’s poem, “The Hind and Panther,” we find the reference:—

“The bloody bear, an independent beast, Unlick’d to form, in groans her hate expressed.”

The scientific name of the hare is Lepus timidus. Dryden, in the “Hind and Panther,” places “amongst the timerous kind the quaking hare.”

Magliabechi, the learned librarian, pinned his faith upon treacle to make his memory retentive. Grataroli, a famous physician of the sixteenth century, wrote a Latin treatise, “The Castle of Memory,” wherein, amongst an enormous number of recipes, we find the internal application of bear’s grease, a hazelnutful of mole’s fat, and calcined human hair, strongly recommended by the learned author.

It was held by our ancestors that freckles came in the early part of the year when the birds were laying their eggs, and that the same mysterious influence of Nature that spotted the eggs of the chaffinch, wren, robin, thrush, and other birds, freckled the human skin.

In another popular remedy for “fitts” one has to “take the furr of a living Bear’s belly, boil it in Aqua Vitæ, take it out, squeeze it, and wrap it upon ye soales of ye Feete.”

A mole skinned, dried in the oven, and then powdered, was held in the fen districts to be a specific for ague. It may still be in vogue—it certainly was in use twenty years ago. The mole must be a male. As much of the powder as would lie on a shilling was to be taken every day, for nine days, in gin. Nine days were then to be omitted, and then the remedy was to be resumed for nine days, by which time a cure was supposed to be effected.

The “Lusiad”; Camoens.

Published therefore in the reign of Charles II., “Our most undoubted and lawful King.” We have most of us formed an opinion on the character of this wearer of the spotless ermine; and the fulsome verse of Winstanley, written, not when the reign was commencing and the national hopes were high, but as it neared its end, is somewhat startling:—

“Long may he live who now doth wear the Crown To tread all Heresies and Schismes down. Great God, let not his prayers e’er return empty, But Crown his Head with Years and Years with plenty.”

Gay’s Fables.

“In the Rabbinical book it saith the dogs howl when with icy breath Great Sammael, the Angel of Death, takes through the town his flight.”—LONGFELLOW, Golden Legend.

The butter made from the milk of a cow fed in a churchyard was held to be a potent remedy for consumption.

As this led to vigorous protests from the cat, and very possibly a good scratching, a gold ring or coin was often substituted, and found to be equally beneficial.

“It is also watchful, dextrous, swift, pliable, and has such good nerves that if it falls from never so high it still lights upon its feet, and therefore may denote those that have so much foresight that whatever befalls them they are still upon their guard.”—Coats, A.D. 1747.

The skin of the cat is the only portion of the animal that can be turned to any use. According to mediæval belief, Satan once thought he could make a man, but only succeeded in turning out a skinless cat. St. Peter, filled with compassion for the miserable object, bestowed on it a fur coat, its only valuable possession, and a queer-tempered beast it has turned out.

He does not specify what dogs—

“Mastiff, greyhound, mongrel, grim, Hound, or spaniel, black, or lym, Or bob-tail tike, or trundle tail,”

though this is clearly not an unimportant detail.

The name is said by Sir E. Tennent, in his “Natural History of Ceylon,” to be from the Telegu words: Pandi-koku, the pig-rat.

A.U.C. 787, equivalent to A.D. 34.

Heliopolis.

Even so comparatively recently as the time of Maundevile we meet with the same symbolic significance, as we find this author declaring that “men may well lykne that Brid unto God: because that there hys no God but on; and also that oure Lord aroos fro Dethe to Lyve the thridde Day.”

“I know,” writes Izaak Walton, in his “Complete Angler,” “we islanders are averse to the belief of wonders, but there be so many strange creatures to be now seen, collected by John Tradescant, who keeps them carefully and methodically at his house near to Lambeth. I will tell you some of the wonders you may now see, and not till then believe, unless you think fit. You may see there the hog-fish, the dogfish, the dolphin, the coney fish, the parrot fish, the shark, the poison fish, the swordfish; and not only other incredible fish, but you may there see the salamander, several sorts of barnacles, of Solan geese, and the bird of paradise; such sorts of snakes, and such birds’ nests, and of so various forms, and so wonderfully made, as may beget wonder and amazement in any beholder.” Walton, as an enthusiastic angler naturally, it will be noted, dwells most upon the strange fish. Charles I. and his queen, together with Archbishop Laud, and many others of rank and influence, visited the museum and assisted by contributing to its stores, and we find in Evelyn’s Diary, September 17th, 1657, that he, too, visited it. The brothers Tradescant were the first well-known collectors of natural curiosities in England, and portraits of them may be seen in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. The Tradescant collection was on December 15th transferred to Elias Ashmole. The botanical genus, Tradescantia, is so called in honour of John Tradescant.

Madagascar.

The Eastern love of the wonderful may be readily seen in the well-known “Arabian Nights,” in the Koran, and in Oriental literature generally. Mohammed tells us, in his sacred book, that he saw in Heaven infinite companies of angels, each a thousand times bigger than the globe of the earth: each had ten thousand heads; every head threescore and ten thousand tongues; and every one of those tongues praised God in seven hundred thousand languages. The throne of Allah was supported by seven angels, each so great that a falcon, if he were to fly a thousand years, could not get so far as the distance from one of their eyes to the other. Gabriel, the doorkeeper of Paradise, has seventy thousand keys which pertain to his office, every key being seven thousand miles long. This exaggerated balderdash is but childish stuff; it contains no element of grandeur or sublimity; and, in reading it, one only wonders, when astonishment and awe were to be excited by an artifice so commonplace, that, while he was about it, all the numbers were not doubled, quadrupled, multiplied ten or a hundred fold; so that we finally come to the conclusion that, with all the arithmetical possibilities open to him, he was but a poor bungler at his business after all.

“She dwelleth and abideth on the rock, upon the crag of the rock, and the strong place. From thence she seeketh the prey and her eyes behold afar off.”—Job xxxix. 28, 29.

“The nature of the Eagle is to bend her eyes full into the sunne beams. So strong is her sighte that she can even see into the great and glaring sunne.”—FERNE, The Blazon of Gentrie.

“As eagle fresh out of the ocean wave Where he hath left his plumes, all hoary grey, And decks himself with feathers, youthful, gay.”

SPENSER.

Dryden.

Hence Dante terms the Saviour of the World “Nostro pelicano;” and an enthusiastic admirer of Charles I., and an evident believer in the idea that he shed his blood for his people, wrote in the year 1649, a book on that king, entitling him “the Princely Pelican.”

Byron.

It is curious that until this species was discovered at the Antipodes a black swan was regarded both by ancient and mediæval writers as the very emblem and type of extravagant impossibility, so that those who found no difficulty in believing in centaurs, mermaids, and fifty other extravagances, felt that they really must draw the line at this.

In “Camden” we read that the device of Anne, queen of Richard II., was “an ostrich with a nayle in his beake.”

Thalaba.

While actual incorporation was doubtless regarded as the most effectual, mere possession was not by any means to be despised. Thus Porta tells us that “if you would have a man become bold and impudent, let him carry about him the skin or eyes of a Lion or a Cock, and he will be fearlesse of his enemies—nay, he will be very terrible unto them.” Scores of equally valuable hints may be gathered from these old authors.

In another book we consulted, “Notes for Cookerie, gathered from experienced Cookes,” published in 1593, it is equally emphatic that “a Cock to be stewed to renew the weake” must be a red one. There is naturally here a connection suggested between the colour of the bird and the ruddy hue of health that is to be hoped for after such a dietary.

MS. No. 10,074 in the Royal Library, Brussels.

In the Middle Ages animals were frequently haled before the judges for various offences. In 1266 a pig was burnt at Fontaney, near Paris, for having killed a child, and in 1386, at Falaise, a sow was condemned to death for a similar offence. Horses and cattle were solemnly tried before the magistrates for manslaughter, and either expiated their offence on the gallows or were burned.

Aubrey tells us that in his younger days people had “some pious ejaculation when the cock did crow, which put them in mind of ye Trumpet at ye Resurrection.”

“The peasants’ trusty clock, True morning watch, Aurora’s trumpeter, The lion’s terror, true astronomer, Who leaves his bed when Sol begins to rise And when Sunne sets then to his roost he flies.”

Speculum Mundi.

“O chanticleer, Your clarion blow, the day is near.”

LONGFELLOW, Daybreak.

Spenser.

Macbeth.

An old writer, one Fulgentius, declares that so far from this croak being monotonous “the Raven hath sixty-four sundry chaunges of her voice.” No other observer seems to have detected this.

A fourteenth-century MS., the “Cursor Mundi,” says of the raven’s exit from the ark:—

“Than opin Noe his windowe Let ut a rauen and forth he flow Dune and vp sought here and thare A stede to sett upon somequar. Vpon the water sone he fand A drinkled best ther flotand. Of that fless was he so fain To schip came he neuer again.”

This notion of the sightlessness of the young swallow was a very popular one. The chelidonium, or swallow wort, according to Aristotle and Dioscorides was so called because the swallows use it to give sight to their young. Goldfinches, linnets, and other birds, in like manner were believed to use the eyebright; while the hawks strengthened their vision, we are told, by means of the plant that was hence called the hawkweed, and still retains that name.

“He was but as a cuckoo is in June,” says Shakespeare in reference to Richard II., that is to say, he had lost the power to attract, his utterances no longer commanded attention.

Thus Christopher Marlowe enshrines the old belief in the lines:—

“But how now stands the wind? Into what corner peers my halcyon’s bill?”

While Shakespeare, in King Lear, refers to the time-servers who “turn their halcyon beaks with every gale and vary of their masters.”

The idea is at least as old as Pliny, as he mentions it in his “Natural History” as a recognized fact too well-known to need any apology or explanation. Theocritus in his seventh idyll dwells on it, and it is found in the writings of Pliny and many other ancient authors.

A quaint little octavo on this subject is that of Dr. Warder, “The true Amazons or the Monarchy of Bees,” being a new discovery and Improvement of those wonderful creatures. The book went through several editions. The one that came under our notice is the third; it is dated 1716.

Ammianus Marcellinus has put it upon record that in imitation of the ingenuity of the crane in assuring vigilance, Alexander the Great was accustomed to rest with a silver ball in his hand, so that on the slightest movement it might fall and wake him. This is certainly heroic treatment, since even such an one as Alexander might fairly claim the necessity that other mortals feel of uninterrupted rest. It reminds one of the dictum of the great Duke of Wellington in defence of his camp-bedstead, accommodation so confined that one could scarcely turn round in it, that directly a man begins to think of turning round it is time to turn out.

In “A Mirror for Mathematics, a Golden Gem for Geometricians, a sure Safety for Saylers, and an auncient Antiquary for Astronomers and Astrologians,” by Robert Tanner, Gent, Practitioner in Astrologie and Physic, a book published in the year 1587, we find an “Epistle dedicatourie” to Lord Howard of Effingham, commencing:—“The Cranes when they fly out of Cilicia, over the mountain Taurus, carrie in their mouths a pebble stone, lest by their chattering they should be ceased upon by the eagles, which birds, Right Honourable, might teach me silence,” &c., &c.

“This creature is in thicknesse as big as a man’s wrist, and of length proportionable to that thicknesse.”—Speculum Mundi.

The “Annals of Winchester,” for the year 1177, inform us that “in this yeare Dragons were sene of many in England.” In 1274 it is recorded that there was an earthquake on the Eve of St. Nicholas’ Day, and that there appeared “a fiery dragon which frightened the English.”

In the “Magick of Kirani,” a Persian book that appeared in an English dress in 1685, we find the representation of a dragon employed as a charm. “If therefore any man engrave a woodpecker on the stone dentrites, and a sea-dragon under its feet, every gate will open unto him; savage beasts will also obey him and come to tameness; he shall also be loved and observed of all, and whatever he hath a mind to, he shall perform.”

On its noble title-page we see on either side of the title of the book a powerful dragon, beneath one is inscribed Dominium, and below the other Vigilantia. At the base a third dragon supports two shields. On one is represented the serpent twining round a staff, the well-known symbol of Æsculapius, inscribed Salus, and on the other the equally familiar symbol of eternity, the serpent with its tail in its mouth, inscribed Immortalitatis.

Thus Lyte tells us that in his day, 1578, it had “none other knowen name than this.”

“Wherein is contained the most excellent Secretes of Phisicke and Philosophie deuided into fower Bookes. In the which are the best approued remedies for the diseases as well inwarde as outwarde, of all the partes of Man’s bodie: treating very amplie of all Dystillacions of Waters, of Oyles, Balmes, Quintessences, with the vse and preparation of Antimonie and Potable Gold.”

The “holy” has, of course, no reference to the sacred character of the mess in question: it is merely the free and easy mediæval way of spelling the word wholly.

Extracted from the “Arcana Fairfaxiana,” a facsimile reproduction of a manuscript book of recipes some three hundred years old, found in an old lumber room at the ancestral seat of the Fairfax family.

Our readers will remember the use that Longfellow makes of this fancy in his “Evangeline:”—

“Only beware of the fever, my friends! Beware of the fever! For it is not like that of our cold Acadian climate, Cured by wearing a spider hung round one’s neck in a nutshell.”

In the diary of Elias Ashmole we find that on May 11th, 1651, he was suffering from ague. He writes: “I took early in the morning a good dose of elixir, and hung three spiders about my neck, ague away, Deo Gratias!” Sometimes a pill made up of spider web is taken, and in some parts of the south of England a favourite remedy for jaundice was the living spider itself rolled up with butter into a pill.

Another of these ancient authorities affirmed that mud engendered frogs that lack feet. In other words, he made acquaintance with tadpoles!

It will be noted on turning back to our quotation from Porta, that this “scarce one” is altogether too favourable to the belief in the jewelled cranium of the toad. Porta, it will be seen, says, “nor could I finde one,” an entirely different state of things.

It will be seen from this that the state of things involved in the too familiar legend, “Made in Germany,” is of ancient date.

Act iii., sc. 9.

Book I., Canto V.

A very good illustration of this treatment may be seen in the statement that “the dogs in Egypt use to lap their water running when they come to Nilus, for fear of the crocodiles there, which cannot but be a fit pattern for us in the use of pleasures; for true it is, we may not stand to take a heartie draught, for then delights be dangerous, howbeit we may refresh ourselves with them as we go on our way, and may take them, but may not be taken by them; for when they detain us, and cause us to stand still, then their sweet waters have fierce Crocodiles; or if not so, they have strange Tarantulas, whose sting causeth to die laughing.”

We meet a like precision of statement in Cockeram’s Dictionary, a quaint old volume, wherein “all such as desire to know the plenty of the English” will find some very strange illustrations of it. He says, edition of 1623, that “the crocodile having eaten the body of a man, will, in fine, weep over the head.”

Readers of Shakespeare will recall how Falstaff rails at Bardolph, calling him the “Knight of the Burning Lamp,” and other sarcasms inspired by the effects of strong liquor on his rubicund countenance. “Thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with thee in the night. I have maintained that Salamander of yours with fire any time this two-and-thirty years.”

Galen, in one of his prescriptions, includes the ashes of a salamander, an ingredient impossible to obtain if fire had no power to destroy the creature.

A parallel idea is that if the body of a crab be laid in the sunshine while the sun is in Cancer it will generate scorpions.

“Andromachus a voulu changer le nom de Mithridate en celuy de Theriaque, à cause des vipères, auxquelles il a attribué le nom, et lesquelles il a ajouté pour la base principale de cette composition.” (Chares, “l’histoire des Animaux etc. qui entrent dans la Theriaque,” Paris, 1868.) See also Heberden’s “Antitheriaca.”

A viper drowned in a bowl of wine gave the draught great healing virtues for leprosy. This happy discovery, like many others of still greater value, was the result of accident. Some mowers found on going to their provisions that a viper had got into the wine, so they, very naturally, “contented themselves with water; but when they had finished their day’s work, and were to go out of the field, as it were out of pity they gave a leprous man the wine wherein the viper was drowned, supposing it better for him to die than to live on in that misery, but he, when he had drank it, was miraculously cured,” at least, so we read in the “Miracles of Art and Nature,” Galen being referred to as the original authority for the story. The first essential in many of these ancient remedies appeared to be that they should be most improbable and unreasonable, and, secondly, that they should be as repulsive as possible.

Spenser.

In “the Ceremonies to be observed at the Coronation of His most Excellent Majesty King George IV.,” the order of the procession is given, the first item of all being “the King’s Herbwoman with her six maids, strewing the way with Herbs.”

In this mysterious isle also “there ben wylde gees that han two Hedes, and ther ben Lyouns all white and als grete as oxen, and many othere dyverse Bestes.”

There is a notion in Cheshire that this complaint can be cured by holding a toad or frog for a few minutes within the child’s mouth, at the imminent risk, one would imagine, of choking the patient. In Norfolk, they had greater faith in giving the child milk to drink that a ferret had previously lapped at.

“The knops or heads are holow within, and for the most part hauing wormes in them, the which you shall find in cleaning the heads. The small wormes that are founde within the knops of teasels do cure and heale the quartaine ague, to be worne or tied about the necke or arme.”—Lyte’s translation of Dodœns, A.D. 1586.

Judges, chap. xiv.

Dryden’s Translation.

This old writer, not being aware of the various stages of egg, larva, pupa, and imago through which butterflies and moths pass, is much perplexed over the silkworm, “whether I may name it a worme or a flie,” he says, “I cannot tell. For sometimes it is a worm, sometimes a flie, and sometimes neither worm nor flie, but a little seed which the dying flies leave behinde them.”

Apart from these various monsters, and the hundreds of others that bear them company, Aldrovandus seems to have been always accessible to anyone who would bring him one wonder the more; hence he also figures a bunch of grapes terminating in a long beard; representations of cloud-warriors in conflict in the sky; comets like blazing swords, and many other wonderful things that set our ancestors wondering in fear and amazement as to what such portents should signify.

“To be shewn at the Royal Infirmary of this city, price sixpence, the largest and most beautiful lion that was ever seen in this country. Also an Egyptian mummy, lately sent as a present to the Infirmary by Alexander Drummond, Esq., Consul of the Turkey Company at Aleppo. Likewise a very large horn of a sea unicorn, which all connoisseurs acknowledge to be a remarkable curiosity.

“N.B.—As the money collected on this occasion is to be applied solely for the relief of the Indigent Sick in the said Hospital, therefore if persons of Substance and Distinction shall give more, it will be thankfully accepted on behalf of the distressed Patients.”—Edinburgh Chronicle, 1758.

In the travels of Boullaye le Gouz, published in 1657, we find a reference to this notion. He says, “I had among my baggage the hand of a Syren, or fisherwoman, which I threw, on the sly, into the sea, because the captain, seeing that we could not make way, asked me if I had not got some mummy or other in my bags which hindered our progress, in which case we must return to Egypt to carry it back again. Most of the Provençals have the opinion that the vessels which transport the mummies from Egypt have great difficulty in arriving safe at port: so that I feared, lest coming to search my goods, they might take the hand of this fish for a mummy’s hand, and insult me on account of it.”

“That dolphins are crooked is not only affirmed by the hand of the painter, but commonly conceived their naturall or proper figure, which is not only the opinion of our times, but seems the belief of older times before us: for besides the expressions of Ovid and Pliny, their Portraicts in ancient Coynes are framed in this figure, as will appear in some thereof in Gesner, others in Goltzius, and Lævinus Hulsius in his description of Coynes. Notwithstanding, to speak strictly, in their naturall Figure they are streight, nor have they their spine convexed or more considerably embowed than Sharkes, Porposes, or Whales, and therefore what is delivered of their incurvity must either be taken Emphatically, that is, not really, but in appearance; which happeneth when they leap above water or suddenly shoot down again: which is a fallacy of vision, whereby streight bodies in a sudden motion protruded obliquely downward appear to the eye crooked, and this is the construction of Bellonius: or, if it be taken really, it must not be universally and perpetually, that is, not when they swimme and remaine in their proper figures, but only when they leape or impetuously whirle their bodies anyway: and this is the opinion of Gesnerus. Or, lastly, it must be taken neither really nor emphatically, but only emblematically; for being the Hieroglyphic of Celerity, and swifter than other animalls, men best expressed their velocity by incurvity, and under some figure of a bowe, and in this sense probably do Heralds also receive it.”—Browne.

In Sussex no better remedy could be found for tooth-ache than the application of a paw cut from a living mole.

INDEX.

“Accedence of Armorie,” 52, 121, 232

Acipenser, 330

Acosta, “travels in the Indies,” 44

Acrid secretion in skin of toad, 281

“Actes of English votaries,” 69

“Adam in Eden,” 48

Adder, 173

Adder eaters, 77

Ælianus, works of, 95

Agriophagi, 72

Ague, specifics for, 172, 186, 309

Ainos of Japan, 61

Albert Nyanza in old maps, 13

Albertus Magnus, 160, 282

Alciatus, Book of Emblems, 84

Aldrovandus, 63, 272, 305, 316

Alectorius, 235, 247

All creation a moral text book, 51, 125

Ambrosinus, 316

Amphisbæna, 304

“Anatomy of Melancholy,” 309

Anchor and Dolphin, 329

André on theory of Creation, 125

Andrew Marvel’s “Loyal Scot,” 69

Andromachus, physician to Nero, 299

Angulo or Hog-fish, 318

Animals in art and fable, 175

“Annals of Winchester,” 269

Anthropophagi, 11, 72

Antipathies, animal, 94, 153, 182, 187, 230, 232, 280, 289

Antipathy and sympathy, 153

Ant’s eggs, oil of, 278

Ants of India, 196

Ape, 122, 153

Apollo and Raven, 241

“Arcana Fairfaxiana,” 279

Arena, lions in the, 123

“Areopagitica,” 225

Ariosto, 207, 224

Aristotle, 30, 31, 55, 302

“Armonye of Byrdes,” 239

Armories, Natural History in, 32, 51, 119, 120, 121

Arms of the City of London, 277

Art, animals in, 175

“Art of simpling,” 188

Asbestos, its supposed nature, 293

Ashmole, diary of, 279

Askham on hare, 165

Asp, 51, 307

“As Pliny saith,” 4, 20

Assyrian seals, 131

Astrological influences, 11

“As you like it,” 208

Aubrey, extract from, 165, 179, 184, 238, 297

Augustine on higher and lower truths, 49

Authors consulted by Pliny, 26

Avicenna on chamæleon, 296

Azores in old map, 39

Bacci on unicorn, 131

Bacon’s “Natural History,” 166

Badge, panther, of King Henry VI., 151

Badger, 198

Bale on scandalous reports, 69

Ballasting of cranes and bees, 260

Bandicoot, 196

Barbary, lions of, 127

Barnacle goose, 214

Barnfield, “Cassandra,” 287

Barrow, “Travels in Africa,” 131

Bartholinus on unicorn, 131

Basilisk, 265, 286, 305

Bay-leaf as medicine, 274

Bearded grapes, 319

Bear, 161, 167, 182

Beaumont and Fletcher, 162, 176

Beaver, oil from the, 278

Bee, 260, 310

Beef, the praise of, 46

Bee-hives attacked by bears, 163

“Belvedere” of Bodenham, 170

Bereus on unicorn, 131

“Bestiare Divin” of Guillaume, 48

Bestiaries of Middle Ages, 31, 50

Blackbird, Sagacity of, 177

Black Swan, 230

“Blazon of Gentrie,” 119, 224

Blood of lion black, 116

Boar, 175

Bœwulf on Mermaid, 80

Boiling river, 43

“Bonduca,” extract from, 162

“Book of Emblems,” 84

“Book of Knowledge,” Winstanley, 183, 248

Boorde’s “Dyetary,” 46

Bosjesmen, ancient Troglodytes, 3, 61

Bossewell’s “Armorie,” 52, 169, 194

Bostock on Pliny, 29

Browne on Vulgar Errors, 56, 92, 106, 157, 162, 178, 205, 255, 267, 284, 313, 328

Buffon on Pliny, 21

Burton, “Miracles of Art and Nature,” 18, 19, 127, 131, 305

Bussy d’Amboise on Unicorn, 130

Butler, Hudibras, extract from, 214

Byron, extract from, 229, 330

Cabbage, the praise of, 47

Camel, 182, 198, 294

Camelopardilis, 124

Camerarius on dolphin, 329

Camillus, “mirror of stones,” 247

Cammetennus, 294

Camoens, extract from, 181

Camphor-tree, 152

Cancer, specific for, 189

Canibali, home of the, 37

“Canterbury Tales,” 276

Capture of elephant, 145

Carbuncle borne by dragon, 274

Carew, extract from, 164

Carlyle on books, 33

Carrier pigeons, 16

Cartazonos, 130

“Cassandra,” extract from, 287

“Castle of Memory,” 166

Cat, 168, 189

Catelan on Unicorn, 131

Cathay, palace at, 151

Catoblepas, 197

Centaur, 79, 294

Cerastes or horned viper, 298, 304

Ceylon, mermaids of, 88

“Ceylon, Natural History of,” 196

Chameleon, 136, 178, 274, 296

Chanticleer, 239

Chares on Theriaca, 299

Chaucer, extract from, 11, 30

Chelidonius, 247

Chelonites of Porta, 283

Chester’s “Love’s Martyr,” 170

“Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” 330

Chinese referred to by Pliny, 28

Churchyard grass, remedial virtues of, 189

Cinirus, 124

Cinnabar, how produced, 137

Coats, extract from, 120, 194

Cobbe on the creation of monsters, 145

Cobra stone, 298

Coca plant, properties of, 18

Cock, 154, 232, 238

Cock-ale, 234

Cockatrice, 236, 267

Cockeram’s Dictionary, 288

Cockle, 196

Cogan, “Haven of Health,” 45, 167, 231, 277, 301

Coleridge on Nightingale, 252

Cole’s “Adam in Eden,” 48 “Art of simpling,” 188

Colours of dying dolphin, 330

Comets like blazing swords, 319

Composition of Venice Treacle, 229

Coney-fish, 209

Convulsions, remedy for, 167, 186

Coolness of blood of elephant, 149

Cornishmen tailed, 68

Corvia, 247

Cos, dragon of, 110

“Cosmography,” Munster’s, 34, 97, 127, 130, 139, 149, 220

Crabs’ eyes a remedy, 235, 335

Crabs generating scorpions, 297

Crane, 56, 260

Crapaudine, or toad stone, 281

Creatures of the fire, 295

Crippled feet of Chinese ladies, 15

Crocodile, 286, 294

Crocuta, 124

Cross on donkey’s back, 184, 186

Crow, sagacity of, 177

Cruelty in preparation of recipes, 48, 248, 335

Ctesias on griffin, 276; on unicorn, 130

Cubs of bear a shapeless mass, 161

Cuckoo broth, 235

Culverwort, 16

“Curiosities of Heraldry,” 237

“Cursor Mundi,” extract from, 242

Cuttle-fish, 335

Cuvier on phœnix, 204; on Pliny, 21

“Cymbeline,” extract from, 208

Cynamolgi, 72

Dagon, the fish god, 93

Daily Post, advertisement from, 90

Dallaway on unicorn, 133

Dead animals generating other creatures, 311

Dead men’s bones, oil from, 278

Deaf as an adder, 303

“De Animalibus” of Aristotle, 31

Death song of the swan, 229

Death-dealing cocatrice, 237

Decker on unicorn’s horn, 134

Deer, 173, 270

“De Humana Physiognomonica,” 78

“De Miraculis,” story from, 108

Democritus on serpent generation, 307

Derceto, 97

De Thaun, “Bestiary” of, 50, 124, 132, 185, 204, 292

Devil’s-bird, 241

“De Virtutibus Herbarum,” 160

Diamond dissolving, 178

Differences in aim in zoological study, 4

Digby, “The Closet Open,” 234

“Dirge,” extract from Gay’s, 241

Dioscorides, writings of, 95

“Discoverie of witchcraft,” 113

“Display of Heraldrie,” Guillim, 52, 120

Divining rod in use, 37

Doctrine of Signatures, 251

Dodœns, extract from, 309

Dog, 8, 119, 187, 189, 270, 316

Dog-headed men, 11, 42, 72

Dog-king, 73

Dolphin, 83, 289, 327

Donkey, 184, 188

Double-bodied animals, 65

Dove, 177, 240

Draconites, 247

Dragon, 268, 274

Dragon-maiden, 110

Dragon and elephant, feud between, 136, 147

Drayton, extract from, 250, 253, 259

Dropsy, remedy for, 298

Drunkenness, to avert, 249

Dryden, extract from, 161, 165, 224, 227, 259, 281

Du Bartas on barnacle-goose, 218

Du Chaillu on gorilla, 3; on pygmies, 60

Dulness of hearing, remedy for, 308

Dust of Malta a remedy, 300

“Dyetary” of Boorde, 46

Eagle, 108, 223, 240, 276

Eale of Ethiopia, 197

Earless animals, 74

Earthworms in medicine, 279

Eastern love of the wonderful, 213

Eastern Travels of John of Hesse, 81

Eel’s blood for warts, 335

Eels from hairs, 182

Effects of climate on human tail growth, 71

Egyptians and the ass, 185

Einhorn, 130

El Dorado of Raleigh, 44

Elephant, 36, 107, 135, 177, 182, 213, 274, 294, 323

Elephant-headed boy, 64

Elizabeth, portrait of Queen, 176

Ellison, “Trip to Benwell,” 165

“Emblemes and Epigrames,” 210

“Emblems” of Whitney, 136

England, first elephant seen in, 142

Epilepsy, cure for, 173, 190

Ermine, the spotless, 176

Ethiopia, land of marvels, 73, 146, 276

“Euphues,” extract from, 262, 281

“Evangeline,” extract from, 247, 279

Evil spirit in donkey, 185

Eyebright for the sight, 48, 298

Fable, animals in, 175

“Fairie Queen,” extract from, 80, 113, 129

Fakirs of India mentioned by Pliny, 28

Famous horses of antiquity, 181

Fascination, power of, 285

Fennel, value of, 47

Fenton on toad stone, 282

Ferne, “Blazon of Gentrie,” 119, 224

Ferret, 173, 309

Feuds, animal, 129, 136

Filial love of storks, 259

Fishes choosing a king, 334

Fletcher on phœnix, 207

Flounder the wry-mouthed, 334

Fondness of dolphin for man, 328

Forget-me-not, 251, 277

Formosa men with tails, 70, 71

Four-eyed men, 74

Four-footed ducks and pigeons, 65

Four-legged serpents, 306

Fox, 167

Foxglove, 251

Freckles, cure for, 166

Frenzel on Unicorn, 131

Frog, 189, 278, 281, 308

Fulgentius on note of Raven, 242

Fuller, extracts from, 117

Galen, prescription of, 291

“Garden of the Muses,” extract from, 170

Garnier, the loup-garou, 108

Gay, extract from, 184, 241

Geliot’s “Indice Armorial,” 120

Gentleman’s Magazine, extract from, 93

Geranites, 247

Gerarde, extract from, 214, 309

Gesner’s “History of Animals,” 129

Giants, 75

Gift of eloquence, To acquire, 249

Gift of invisibility, 235

Gilbert White’s “Selborne,” 180

Glanvil, assertions of, 113, 276, 290

Glowworm, 257

Goat, 177, 234, 331

“Golden Gem for Geometricians,” 262

Gonzale on monstrous men, 79

Gorilla mentioned by Hanno, 3, 67

Gosse, “Romance of Natural History,” 86

Gout, remedy for, 244, 246, 278

Gray, oil from the, 278

Great-lipped men, 76

Green lizards in mediæval recipe, 8

Grimalkin, 192

Guiana of Sir W. Raleigh, 44

Guillaume, “Bestiare Divin” of, 48

Guillim’s “Display of Heraldrie,” 52, 120, 132, 176, 243

Gujerat, lions of, 124

Hairy men, 67

Hairy serpents, 306

Hakluyt’s “Voyages,” 44

Halcyone, myth of, 258

Halle on knowledge for Chirurgeons, 12

“Hamlet,” extract from, 228

Hanno’s pursuit of gorilla, 3, 67, 68

Hare, 8, 164, 165, 184

Harpy, 64, 146

Hartebeest, 124

“Haven of Health,” Cogan’s, 45, 167, 231, 277, 301

Hawkweed, 248

Headless men, 34, 65, 75

Heberden’s “Antitheriaca,” 299

Hedgehog, 168, 256

Hentzner on horn of unicorn, 134

Heraldic animals, 83, 127, 276, 328

Herbert’s book of travels, 39, 176

Herb-tea in the Spring, 274

Herodotus, writings of, 30

Herring, the king of fishes, 334

Herschell on love of books, 32

Heylyn, travels of, 42

Heywood on stork, 259

“Hind and Panther,” extract from, 161, 165

Hippeau on theological treatment, 6, 49

Hippocampus, 314

Hippopotamus, 118, 143, 149, 314

“Histoire des Anomalies” of St. Hilaire, 62

“Historia Naturalis” of Jonston, 130

“Historie of Plants,” Gerarde, 214

“History of America,” Robertson, 79

“History of Animals,” Gesner, 129

“History of Serpents and Dragons,” Aldrovandus, 272

Hog-fish, 209, 318

Holland, English version of Pliny, 29

Hollerius on snake stone, 298

Homer on eagle, 225; on pygmies, 55

Hoopoe, stone from, 247

Horned men, 76, 294

Horned viper, 298

Hornets from dead mule, 311

Horn of unicorn, 133, 324

Horse, 181, 189, 236, 270, 276, 294, 297

Horse-shoe, 184

Hound’s-tongue, value of, 188

Howling of dogs an evil omen, 188

How serpents are developed, 297

How tempests may arise, 321

How the raven became black, 241

How to procure toad-stone, 283

Hudibras, quotation from, 162, 214

Hudson on mermaids, 85

Humble bees from dead ass, 311

Hyæna, 152, 156; Men turned into, 104

Hydrophobia, treatment of, 189, 234

“Hymn on the Nativity,” Milton, 258

Iliad, extract from, 225

Incubators mentioned by Jordanus, 15

Indian customs mentioned by Pliny, 28

“Indice Armorial,” 120

Indifference to animal suffering, 48, 167, 248, 335

Inhabitants of the sea-depths, 313

Insomnia, specific for, 177

Instances of sagacity in birds, 177

Invisibility, gift of, 245, 297

Ipotayne, half-man, half-horse, 79

Izaak Walton, extract from, 209

Jaguars, men turned to, 104

Jaundice, specific for, 189

Java, home of the pygmies, 58

Jewel-bearing toad, 281

Job on the eagle, 224

John of Hesse, travels of, 81

Jonston’s “Historia Naturalis,” 130

Jordanus, extract from, 13, 58, 73, 196, 213, 274

Juggernaut, 15

“Julius Cæsar,” extract from, 130

Jumar, 124

Keen sight of eagle, 225

Kentish men tailed, 68, 69

Kingfisher, 255

“King Henry IV.,” extract from, 166, 254

“King Henry VI.,” extract from, 161, 208, 224, 246, 266, 296, 304

“King Henry VIII.,” extract from, 286

“King Lear,” extract from, 254

King of beasts, 116; of birds, 232; of fishes, 334; of serpents, 266

Kite, sagacity of, 177

“Knight of Malta,” extract from, 176

Lady loup-garou, 109

Lalla Rookh, extract from, 210

Lamia, 294

Lamb-tree, 223

Land of the pygmies, 57

Landseer’s animal painting, 175

Language of beasts, to learn, 42

Lapwing, 177

Lark, sagacity of, 177

Larva of tiger-moth, 306

Laterrade on the unicorn, 131

Lavender as a remedy, 301

Legend of the robin, 250

Legh, “Accedence of Armorie,” 52, 121, 144, 178, 187, 242

Leo, “History of Africa,” 158, 271

Leontophonos, 128

Leopards, men turned to, 104

Leviathan, 334

Licking little bears into shape, 161

Lightning, protection against, 258

Like to like, 300

Lily, “Euphues” of, 281

Lion, 116, 232, 270, 276, 294, 303, 310

Lipless men, 73

“Livre des Creatures” of De Thaun, 50, 124

Lizard, 8, 296

Lomie, 197

Long-eared men, 42, 77

Long-headed men, 78

Longfellow, extract from, 247, 279

Loup-garou, 108

Love of the marvellous, 10

“Love’s Martyr” of Chester, 170

“Loyal Scot” of Andrew Marvel, 69

Luminous ink, 312

Lupton, extract from, 282

“Lusiad” of Camoens, 181

Luther on whale, 334

Lycanthropy, 101

“Macbeth,” extract from, 192

Macaulay on books, 32

“Maccabees,” extract from, 145

Macer on fennel, 47

Mad as a March hare, 165, 166

Mad dog, 9

“Magick of Kirani,” 251, 270

Maneless lions, 123

Manticora, 156, 197

Manufacture of mermaids, 91; of pygmies, 58

Maori traditions, 61

“Mappæ Clavicula,” extract from, 182

Marcellus, cure of blindness, 248

Marco Polo, travels of, 40, 144, 211

Marlowe, extract from, 241, 255

Marmalade for students, 46

Martin’s “Philosophical Grammar,” 132

Marvellous Isle of Dondum, 75

Matthew Prior, drawing of elephant, 143

Maundevile, extract from, 15, 16, 110, 138, 147, 151, 195, 202, 244, 276, 308, 336

Mauritius veal, 89

Medical zoology, 4, 45

Mediæval theory of creation, 125

Melancholia, its cause, 166

Men who lived on odours, 58, 75

Mendez Pinto the marvellous, 41

Mermaid, 79, 80, 313

Metacollinarum, 294

“Merchant of Venice,” extract from, 54, 192, 229

“Metamorphoses,” Ovid, 101

Metempsychosis, 107

Mewing nuns, 105

“Midsummer night’s dream,” extract from, 83

Milton, extract from, 226, 253, 258, 334

“Miracles of Art and Nature,” extract from, 18, 19

“Mirror for Mathematics,” 262

Mirror of stones, 247

Mithridate, 299

Mole, 168, 172, 335

Monoceros, 130

“Monstrorum Historia” of Aldrovandus, 63

Moon-worshipping elephants, 139

Moore, Extract of, 210

Moral-pointing treatment of zoology, 4, 6, 173, 244, 287, 293

Moss from dead man’s skull, 278

Moufflon in Munster’s book, 35

Mouse, 137, 167, 194

Mouthless men, 75, 76

Munster’s “Cosmography,” 34, 97, 127, 130, 139, 149, 220, 306

Music, dolphins love of, 330

Musinus, 129

Mussel, 196

Mutianus on monkeys, 139

Narwhal tusk, 324

“Natural History,” Bacon’s, 166

“Natural History of Norway,” 87

“Natural History of Selborne,” 180

“Natural Magick,” 154

“New Jewell of Health,” 277

Nightingale, 251

Nile represented in old maps, 13, 36

Noah and the raven, 242

Noseless men, 73

Oannes the fish-god, 96

Odin’s wolf, 157

Oil of swallows, 249

Oils of medicinal repute, 278

Olaus Magnus, writings of, 106, 320, 333

Omens from animals, 164

One-legged men, 42, 294

“Orlando Furioso,” extract from, 207, 304

“Ortus Sanitatis,” extract from, 280

Oryges, 197

Ostrich devouring iron, 231

“Othello,” Extract from, 241, 282

Ovid, the “Metamorphoses” of, 101

Owl, 246

Oxford life in the year 1636, 46

Oyster, the susceptible, 196

Panther, 149, 232

“Paradise lost,” extract from, 334

Parkinson, on barnacle goose, 219

Parrot-fish, 209

Parsee funeral customs, 13

“Pathway to Knowledge,” extract from, 312, 336

Peacock, 240, 254

Pearl-fish, 332

Pegasus, 324

Pelican, 227, 240

Percy Society Publications, 240

Performing elephants, 138

“Periplus” of Hanno, 67

Philomela, 252

“Philosophical Grammar,” Martin, 132

Philostratus on pygmies, 55

Phisiologus on the mermaid, 80

Phœnix, 200, 240, 294

Physician-tench, 335

Pietro del Porco, 176

Pillars of Hercules, 36

Pinto, liar of first magnitude, 41

Plagiarism, 45

Playmate, dragon as a, 275

Pliny’s “Natural History,” 21, 95, 123, 150, 246

Plutarch, quotation from, 37

Poison fish, 209

Polypus and the significance thereof, 4, 5

Pomphagi, 72

Pontarf, 338

Pontoppidan, writings of, 87

“Poor Robin’s Almanack,” extract from, 170

Pope on learned blockheads, 33

Porta, extract from, 78, 122, 124, 152, 154, 160, 172, 182, 233, 283, 295, 300

Potter’s “Booke of Phisicke,” 45

Powdered mummy, 278

Praise of method, 53

Prawn, 332

Prester John, kingdom of, 293

“Pseudodoxia Epidemica,” 92

“Purchas his Pilgrimage,” 44, 318

Pygmies, 54, 294

Pyragones, 295

“Quentin Durward,” extract from, 157

Rabbit, 119

Raleigh, Sir Walter, on Guiana, 44

Ram, 198

Ram-headed man, 64

Rat, 194, 196, 282

Raven, 177, 241

Raven-stone, 244

Ray, its love for man, 331

Reginald Scot, “Discoverie of Witchcraft,” 113

Rejuvenescence of the eagle, 226

Relentless asp, 307

“Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme,” 165, 298

Remedies for hydrophobia, 189

Remora, 326

Rheumatism, remedy for, 167

“Rich Jew of Malta,” extract from, 241

Rings bearing toad-stone, 281

Robbers checkmated, 9

Robertson, “History of America,” 79

Robin, 249

Rochester rudeness to A. Becket, 68, 69

Roc or Rukh, 211

“Romance of Natural History,” Gosse, 86

Roman mosaic at Brading, 98

“Romeo and Juliet,” extract from, 192

Rondoletius, book of, 319

Roulet, the loup-garou, 109

Sachs on unicorn, 131

“Saducismus Triumphatus,” 113

Sagacity of the crane, 261

Salamander, 154, 209, 290

Sargon, 331

“Savage Africa,” Winwood Reade, 61

Sciatica, specific for, 182

Scoresby on mermaids, 84

Scorpion, 9, 277, 278, 302, 338

Scorpion-grass, 251, 277

Scots Magazine, extract from, 87

Screech-owl, 108

Sea elephant, 323

Sea horse, 314

Seal, Greek superstition respecting, 289

Serpent, 173, 178, 236, 267

Serpentine monstrosities, 305

Shakespeare, extract from, 11, 32, 54, 55, 130, 173, 180, 192, 208, 228, 229, 241, 246, 253, 254, 255, 266, 277, 291, 296, 304

Shakespeare on learning, 33

Sheep as great as oxen, 76

Shelley on nightingale, 253

“Ship of Fools,” 39

Shony, the storm-dog, 191

Shrew-ash, 180

Shrew-mouse, 179, 234

Silkworm, 312

Silurus, 338

Single-footed men, 20

Sir Emerson Tennant on travellers’ tales, 2

“Six Pastorals,” extract from, 250

Skelton’s poem on birds, 240

Sleeplessness, to cause, 251

Snail-shells as houses, 308

Snake charmers mentioned by Pliny, 29

Song of the nightingale, 252

Southey, extract from, 232

“Speculum Mundi,” extract from, 5, 81, 88, 131, 133, 144, 180, 194, 227, 229, 252, 265, 266, 287, 320

“Speculum Regale,” 86

Speechless men, 73

Spenser, quotation from, 80, 113, 129, 150, 226, 240, 281, 286, 301, 326, 327

Sphinx, 146

Spider, 279, 282, 308

Squirrel, 174

Stag-wolf, 160

Stanley rediscovering pygmies, 3, 60

Stellion, 154

Stolbergk on unicorn, 131

Stone in lapwing’s nest, 8

Stones of magic virtue, 247

Stork, 259

Storm-raisers, 191

Strabo on the pygmies, 55

Strewing herbs, 302

Struys’ voyages and travels, 44, 70

Subjects dealt with by Pliny, 22

Sucking fish or remora, 326

“Survey of Cornwall,” extract from, 164

Sus Marinus, 317

Suttee an ancient usage, 14

Swallow, 8, 240, 247, 260

Swallow-wort, 248

Swam-fish, 333

Swan-song, 228

Swift, quotation from, 37

Symbol of resurrection, 203

Sympathy and antipathy, 153

Syrens, 82

Tacitus on phœnix, 201

Tailed men, 43, 68, 69

“Tale of a Tub,” Swift, 37

“Taming of the Shrew,” extract from, 180

Tavernier on bird of paradise, 210

Tears of the crocodile, 286

Teasel-heads, 309

“Tempest,” extract from, 79, 209

Tench, the physician fish, 335

Tennant on works of ancient travellers, 2

Tensevetes, 294

Ten-tailed lizard, 63

“Theater of plants,” 219

Theocritus on halcyon calm, 258

Theologians, a study of zoology, 4

Theriaca, 299

Thoes, 124

“Thousand notable things,” 282

Three-eyed men, 74

Three-headed monster, 65

Thynne’s “Book of Emblems,” 210

Tiger, 118, 198

Tiger-men, 104

“Timon of Athens,” extract from, 130

Titian, device of, 161

Title-pages full of interest, old, 6, 34, 272

Titles of old books, 12

Toad, 236, 274, 279, 308

Toad-stone, 281

Toad-wort, 280, 298

To catch Sargi, 331

Tooth-ache, remedy for, 335

Topsell, extract from, 165, 168, 171, 179, 280

Torpedo, 257

Tortoise, sagacity of, 178

Tradescant’s museum, 209

Transfer of valuable animal properties to man, 8

Travellers’ tales, 3, 338

“Travels in Africa,” Barrow, 131

Travels of Le Gouz, 326

Treachery of the shrew mouse, 179

“Trip to Benwell,” extract from, 165

Troglodytes mentioned by Pliny and others, 3

“Troilus and Cressida,” extract from, 304

Tusser’s “Husbandry,” 301

“Two Gentlemen of Verona,” extract from, 296

Two-headed animals, 65

Unchangeableness of old customs, 13, 28

Urcheon, urchin, or hedgehog, 169

Use of elephant in war, 137

Value of personal observation, 199

“Varia Historia,” extract from, 95

Venice treacle, 9, 299

Venomous men, 43

Versipellis, the skin-turner, 106

Vervain in recipe, 8

Victoria Nyanza in old maps, 13

Viper in medicine, 298, 299

Virgil on bees, 261, 311

“Voiage and Travaile” of Maundevile, 15, 16, 110, 138, 202, 308

Warder, Dr., on bees, 261

Wart, to cure, 182, 190

Wasps from dead horse, 311

Waters of Lethe, 99

Weasel, 119, 188, 296, 318

Weather prognostics, 82, 170

Weeping of deer, 173

Wehr-wolves, 99, 104

Whales pacified with tubs, 37, 39

When venison should be avoided, 173

Whitney’s “Emblems,” 136

Whooping cough, remedy for, 163, 186, 188, 308

Why bears attack bee-hives, 163

Winstanley’s “Book of Knowledge,” 183, 248, 312

Wolf, 8, 118, 154, 157, 182

Wolf-headed man, 79

Wondrous beasts of mediæval fancy, 197

Woolly bear, 306

Wren, 249

Wright’s translation of De Thaun, 50

Xenophon on boar, 175

Ylio of De Thaun, 51

Yule’s translation of Jordanus, 14

G. NORMAN AND SON, PRINTERS, FLORAL STREET, COVENT GARDEN.

May, 1895.

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