and Thrix no doubt some think it to be the African mouse in Plautus Isidore writes it without an aspiration and derives it from the noise he makes and rustling in shaking his bristles Claudian describes him to be long snowted like a Hog his bristles like horns stif his eyes fiery red under his rough back are seen the prints of a small whelp But Agricola makes him to be Hare-mouthed with four teeth two above two beneath eared like a man footed afore like a Badger behind like a Beare his bristles or prickles on his back and sides partly white partly black sometimes two palmes long which he can make to start up as a Pea-cock his traine They are common in Ethiopia and are in all Africa and India to be found in Italy and France now and then but seldome also in Galicia as the pilgrims of Compostella testify who weare their prickly quills in their caps They lurke in groves among the bushes They live on apples turneps peares parsnips and crumbled bread they drinke water but if mixt with wine most greedily They can dart their quills at their enemy and aime them like arrows whence it may be the Archers art came By night they feed most in winter they lurk in their holes They carry their young as many dayes as the Beare Gluttony hath not spared it neither some have eaten it and they cry it up for a dainty you may see how to dresse it in Ambrosine out of Scapius In Phisick it seemes to conduce to the same maladies as the Hedge-hog doth Pliny made tooth-picks of the prickles to fasten the teeth And women use them for bodkins to part their hair There is small difference between them Some distinguish them into sea and land Porcupines but too confidently no good Authour mentions the sea one Such a kind of beast Cardan saw at Papia fifteen hundred and fifty as big as a Fox mouthed like a Hare the teeth sticking like the squirrells the eyes black and serpent-like the hair like a Goats beard hanging in the neck the forefeet like the Badgers the hinder like the Bears eared like a man beset with almost an hundred pricklequils some crooked at top else fast but rustling as he went Goos-tailed the feathers spiny the voyce grumbling like a dogs he hated all dogs probably it was some mungrill sprung from the Porcupine and some other beast CHAPTER XXI Of the Tatus or the Brasil Hedge-hog THere is a kind of an armed beast called a Tate by the Spaniards Armadillo by the Portugese Sneubertado by the Italians Barbato by the Brasilians Tatau by some Tatusia and Tatus in new Spain Chirquincus and Cassamin elsewhere by other Indians Ajatochtli or a Gourdcony for he as they lives in burrows He can dig in one night fifty paces if he be not tied no place can hold him he mines through all in houses and towns and gets away There are sundry kinds of these armed beasts but the Ajatochtlus seemes to me the strangest rarely written or found He is armed with hard plates as I my self have seene As big as a Malta dog the feet small as a swines the snout long and slender He is all over armed as with male or armour like a Cavalier plated the plates joyned close distinct which he can move and every way fence himself with His belly is bright and soft-shined as ours having here and there long slender hairs He hunts after Ants lies on his back with his tail on his mouth so that the pis-mires comming on fall strait as a prey into his power which he eats It is said also that he fills with his own water the hollow on his belly between the plates and so the ants the moysture lying in their way come directly into his mouth when he flies in all hast he claps his head and tail on his belly and fences himself with his shell rolling up himself round If he be chased hard he flies at the hunters breast and oft strikes almost the breath out of his body He haunts marishes Feeds on worms fish berries and apples The flesh is very fat and sweet but flegmatick and breeds crudities The ancients used the tail to fence those they called their Zebratanae which were of frequent use among them Their shall is many wayes usefull both in warre and peace They say that a dram of the pouder thereof taken in helps to sweat out the French pox He is found in hot boggy places There are among the Lucatanenses two sorts of them some are as harmlesse and acceptable nourishment others unwholesome and poysonous provoking to vomite and filling the belly so with wind that they bring swounding fits and at length kill The Antidote is oyl of olives unlesse the venome have too farre prevailed then there is no remedy If happily any recover their hair falls off the colour fades and they pine away by degrees Those that beare eight shells or plates are harmlesse those with six venomous The harmles also want a hip-bone and have red spots about the belly this beast is beloved of the Vipers that have a voyce that they can live together in the same hole and never injure each other The former kinde is armed round to admiration other gates then those in Spain or elsewhere in Europa He is fourefooted covered all over tail and all with a hide like the slough of a Serpent called the American-Crocodile betwixt white and ash-colour but inclining more to white like a Barbed war-horse as big as an ordinary Dog harmles burrowing himself in the earth like the Conies they are taken in nets and with Cros-bows killed commonly in seed-time when the stubble is burnt or the ground tilled or husbanded to bring grasse Consalvus writes that he had often eat of them and that it is better tasted then kid and found wholesome He thinks that men might hence learne to Arme-horses completely capable Others are otherwise opinioned about them Some say he was never seen to eat but lives ever under and on earth Others say some few have been brought into France and been seen to eat seeds and fruits I refute neither they may speake of diverse kindes Platean and Clusius acknowleged three sorts of them One short-tayled one foot and foure inches long and fourteen inches about covered with a dusky hard crust so grown happily by age and oft handling after a manner checquered from the neck to the midst roundish the shells party-coloured the middle of the body set with three rows of diverse coloures fouresquare plates the hinder-parts as the first the head so plated to the nose the eares wide and pointed the tayl short not greater then a mans two fingers ends round and armed the belly soft and shaggy as the picture presented it as also the hinder-part of the thighs and the throat and nostrills three toes on the hinder-feet and spur'd two on the
in the waters that never freeze but not in brimstony or mare-waters they being too clammy They eat any creature that swim are greedy after Bees dead Moles Probably they eat herbs also The male covers the female which layes egges after and oft black flesh with fair eyes and tail and after they get the Frogs shape the tail being parted into two hinder-legs Strange it is that after six months living they are indiscernably resolved into slime and again reingendred in the spring puddles But some in warmer waters last all winter and in spring the old ones swim about The egges are shed about the banks of pones and marishes hanging together as in a string like black bits of flesh Chymists call it spermas or spawn They hate Storks Swans the Buzzard the Salmander Putter Pike Eel and fire Storks devour them The Swan by eating them cures himself of a certain malady They combate oft with Salamandres It is well known how the Pike and Eel swallow them Kindle a fire by night on the banks where they are they croke not nor stir you may easily take them in your hand Their voyce is brekekex koax koax croaking Aristotle calls the noyse the hee s make in coupling time ololygon hurt them they squeak like a mouse About Cyrene they are mute But bring crokers thither they abide so In Seriphus also and a certain lake of Thessaly they croke not their flesh is loose whitish moyst and subject to rot so that they that oft eat them grow wan and feverish their lips are so close in August that you can hardly open them they ly with the belly above and the sides under water If you stop their breath you choak them They love warmth and therefore croke in summer against winter they skulk Busbequius heard them by Strigonium in December the waters there being warm and sulphurous They are clamorous against rain either because they feel it colder or are much taken with sweet water They can dive long having but small lungs They are thought to dy in winter and revive at spring They lurk also in the ground and come with their young abroad then They couple by night and on land not for shame but fear In Egypt when they see the water-serpent they carry a piece of reed thwart to prevent being swallowed up In France they drove away a whole city To know their sex prick the back with a needle from the Hee shall spurt out red blood out of the Shee yellow water Galen hath omitted their use in food The common opinion is that they are light of disgestion yeeld good juice but cold and moyst The Romans never used them but now from May to October they are eaten roast or boyled all but the head the hips are best liked Mundella counts them most harmlesse of cold things and when they gender not Others forbid the eating as venemous See how to dresse them in Ambrosine In Physick both in whole and parts they help against sundry maladies They remove the blewnesse after blows Tied on the jaws they ease tooth-ache and sod in vineger they fasten loose teeth The juice removes squincy and helps the almonds of the ears and abates swellings The soft pulpis given against tisick with Capons-flesh Pine-apples and Sugar Boiled in oyl easens pain in the sinews Against every poysonous bite it is cried up the ashes stanch blood Galeatius of S. Sophia saies it was tied to a Hens-neck which being after cut off there gushed no blood out Some blow it into the nostrils for the Haemorrhagia and with oil of Lilies kept in an leaden box for the Interemta and with conserve of Roses to helpe the writhing of the countenance Ambrosin shews how to prepare the oyl It is also cried up against joynt pain from a hote cause The eyes men hang in fine linnen about the neck of the ill-sighted the heart bound on the heart allays burning feavers and hath helped fistulaes the lungs taken out through the back wrapped in an cabbage leaf and burnt in a pot is given in the falling sicknesse others take the liver It helped the Elector Palatine The dust of the liver some take as a quartan fit comes lay it afore pis-mires and that part that they desire is an antidote against all venome the gall helps the bloody flux and kills worms in old sores the fat drop'd into the ears removes pains the Spawn is good against the Erysipelas and other inflammations emrods scab itch morfew the water helps the rednesse of face A staffe on which a Frog shaken from a serpent hath been eases women in travell Pliny relates fables about the tongue as that Democritus saith that if you take the tongue clear out that it touch not any other part and throw the Frog into the water and lay the tongue on the panting of the heart of a sleeping women she shall in her sleep answer you all you ask Some spring from egges some out of mud as in Egypt There are green and pale and ash-coloured Frogs In Stochornium a hill in Bern are two lakes wherein are Frogs with great heads and long tails ARTICLE II. Of Land-Frogs POINT I. Of the Toad CAlled Bufo from blowing perhaps and Rubeta from being among bushes Phronon and Phrunen the poyson running to the head and causing giddinesse or from the shrub Phruganon By Lucian Phusalos from swelling if but touched It is thick skined hardly to be pearced by the sharpest stake pale spotted as if pimpled the belly swoln and pufd thick-headed broad-backed without hair One sort lives on land and in marishy puddles The phansy shady rotten holes There are none in Ireland bring any thither they say they dy sprinkle but irish dust upon them They feed on earthy moysture herbs worms bees It is said they eat so much earth a day as they can grasp with the forefoot They lurk oft under sage there are sad stories of divers dying with tasting sage leaves whether they eat it or no is not known They are bred out of egges and rotten stuff and out of buried ashes and in Dariene from the drops falling from slaves right hands as they water the floor and from a duck buried and from menstrue we read of womans voiding toads They hold enmity with salt for being sprinkled therewith they pine away to the bones if we beleeve Albert. Strong sents as of rew c. drives them away as also of a blooming vine They fight with Cats and dy for it Moles and they devoure each other A Spider strikes him dead at a blow They love Sage Weezels will slide into their mouths Plantan is their antidote against Spiders By day and in winter they skulk and ly in the paths by night and rome about they hate the Sun-beams Hevygated they are sometimes they leap Strike them they swell and
that Zoroaster lived once six moneths with milke alone which Atheneus declares also of another As for what belongs to Medicines Horses milk whay blood greace curd teeth heart-bone liver stones gall hayre hoofes sweat foame spittle stale and dunge hath place therein their Milke is very purgative as Dioscorides delivers Whay serves to cleanse the Ulsers of the reins to wit that that by seathing is sever'd from the milk if we beleeve Aethius Rhasis writes that a woman if shee unwittingly drink Mares-milk if shee presently accompany with her husband shall conceive I find also in Pliny that the same milk is good to wash the matrix Their blood is of a purifying quality but whether that of mares that have taken horse or of stallions or of either sex experience may best decide Pliny writes that the same is good for the Kings evill and fariers use it for divers diseases The Phragmaticum drawn from the matrix warme with oyl and wine and smeard on over the whole beast against the hayr cures it The Gall is of a malignant nature and is reckoned among poysons so that the Priest for that cause must not touch a Horse His grease smoked brings forth a dead birth and the after-birth follows His marrow is mixt with ointment for the cramp Curd from the Mares milke is accounted a remedy against bloody fluxes and collicks say Dioscor Gale Avicenna and Haly. Meal made of their teeth sprinkled on the privities cures many cures their greefs The teeth that a Horse first sheds tied to infantes eases them in breeding teeth and with more successe if they have not toucht the ground Sextus writes that with a touch they heal the toothake for hee adds that if an infant kisse a horse mouth the pain of the teeth is not felt nor will a horse bite an infant The tongue in wine is a present remedy for the Milt saith Pliny The Heartbone neerly resembles dogsteeth It scarifies or opens a sore or if you take a tooth out of a dead horses jaw it helps a sore shoulder Plini saith infallibly The Liver laid up in a cedar chest tempered with wine of chies and water prevents the consumption of the Liver De Milt drunke in fresh water cast forth a dead child saith Pliny Their stones dride and drunke provoke lust Bunches in their knees and the hard skin of their hoofs or grown ground to pouder and given in vineger are good against the falling sicknesse as Dioscor Galen and Pliny write The hayr tied at a doore keepes flies and the worms called cniphes out as Rhasis and Albertus have delivered Three Horse bristles tied in so many knots within sores in the privities helpe them The ashes of the same taken out of the head or belly stops a flux of blood Warts are taken away if you bind a horse hayr about them because by tying that that feeds them is stopt and so they dry away The ashes of their Hoofs smeare with oyl and water on wax kernels and apostumate mattery swelling in any part scatters and removes them and also bunches if mingled with hot urine The same being taken in with wine and water helps against the stone in de bladder Hierocles write scrapings pourd into a horses nostrils provokes him to stale Their sweat drunk with urine in a bath drives out belly wormes and serpents if you will trust the promises of some mixt with wine and drunke by one great with child makes her miscarry If a knife or sword warme out a wound be dipt therein it is so infected saith Albertus that the wounded place will never leave bleeding till the party dy Their fome newly taken from them infuse in oyl of roses helps eares though never so sore Gesner commends their spittle as a remedy for the pestilentiall burning in the jaws that sometimes in summer troubles especially shouldiers Let the patient saith hee gargle horses spittle in his mouth that is provenderd with oats or barly then bruse together living crabs presse out the moysture and wash it again with the same if you cannot get living ones sprinkle the pouder of crabs dried in an oven after you have washt it with horses spittle Give to them that are so far gone in a consumption of the lungs that they are given over an horses some or spitle in warme water three dayes together the sick person shall without delay be healed but the horse shall dy As for their stale and dung let it suffice to have said that mingled with smiths forge water it helps the falling sicknesse the same sod in white wine is used against the collicke and the bite of a Scorpion and in water good against a flux Being fresh and put to the nose stanches blood especially if stird with chalk and sharp vineger mingled with Egg-shell beaten to powder it prevents the over-bleeding of a wound Their breath as some feign is a preservative against the plague The differences or kinds of Horses are manifold the cheefe are borrow from places parts and certain accidents From place those of Acarnan are said to be greatest whence it grew a proverb when men spake of any huge thing The Aethiopian Horses the wild I beleeve are reported to be wingd and horned and can endure no heat Those from Agrigentum were use to be sent of old to the Graecian games and went away still conquerors The Alanican were fleetest and strongest Probus had one as men say of such swiftnesse that between sun and sun hee went an hundred mile and would hold out so ten dayes together as wee have said The English are most pacers few trotters saith Polydore Virgil. The Apaniensers in Sytia kept above 30000 Mares and 300 they sent out for breed Those of Apulia are cried up for the best war-horses saith Varro and Volateran Those of Arabia specially the Mares in a day and a night or thereabout can rid an 100 mile ground if we beleeve Vartomannus Arcadia is famous for breed of mules tween-horses and shee-asses whence it hath the name Hippobatos The Armenian are of the Parthian race but have greater heads saith Absyrtus The Gennets of Austria are small having a soft turning in the opening of their thighs have been in great request but are unfit for warre The Barbaries out of Tunis and Numidia are swiftest Those of Bengala are so hard hooft that they need not be shod though they travell among rocks and mountains In Bisnagar they are sould for 400 or 500 peeces of gold and sometimes 800 because they are fetcht elsewhere The Britones have short thighs and eares Those of Burgundy most patient The Calabrian best travellers Those of Cappadocia best of all They used to pay yearly to the Persian a thousand five hundred Those of Caraja are brought by merchants into India the natives use to cut two or three joynts from their tayl that they may not swinge their rider Those of Biscay are whitish brought into the
the like of a shee-Asse of Iohn à Grua the juggler Shee saith hee would first daunce three severall kinds of daunces as the musick changed and that with her forefeet held up with great alacrity and anone as if all her jollity were turn'd into the deepest sorrow cast herself all along on the ground and there ly stone still as struck with an apoplexy and could not be brought to stir with spurning or kicking after being bid to greet all the beholders shee would like a man turne her eyes and head toward them all and salute them doing obeysance with her forefeet and which was the greatest wonder of all shee to the amazement of the bystanders would cast her body through a hoop at her masters beck as cleverly as a dog should leap through Lastly like a dogge shee would take up an handkerchief or glove dropt on the ground and restore it to the owner They are so fond on their colts that they will run through fire to come at them and are so loving to their kind that they swound if they see them dy It is also observed that the sheeashe takes speciall heed that shee bring not forth afore any mans eyes or in the light When shee is overloaden shee shews it by hanging down her eares That Asses flesh hath serve for food is witnest by Galen The story also of Charles V. relates the Spanjards did sometime eat it Wee know also that M.D.XVI. at the siege of Verona it was counted a dainty when they used lentils and beanes but seldome The Persians also on their birth-feast-day would rost an Asse whole and reckoned it among Princely delicates Mecaenas saith Pliny was the first who appointed Asse-colts in feasts at that time prefer'd afore wilde Asses after his time the tast grew out of request That they are ill tasted and hard of disgestion and spoil the stomach they that have fed on them can witnes The Physitians have brought into use Asses milk blood flesh liver spleen yard stones hoofs scurf stales and dung Galen saith their milk is thinnest if compared with that of the cattell that we use to milke but thick if compared with that of camels and Mares Unlesse we so distinguish he must be said to contradict himself since Pliny also writes that camels-milk is thinnest next that of Mares the shee-asses so thick that men use it in stead of curds It is best if she be well well fed young and shortly after her foaling Physitians advise some of them that they that are in a consumption should suck it themselves that it abate not of the native warmth Galen prescribe it to yong man who was wasted away mixt with hony as soon as he came out of a bath The same drunke alone refresheth an exulcerated stomack and is commended against a cough leannes and spitting of blood Drinking it helps a sore breast as Pliny delivers and taken in with hony it helps monthly terms It is not good for a weak or giddy swimming head It helps against parget ceruse brimstone and quicksilver Gargling it is most comfortable for exulcerated jaws There are examples of some helped of the gout by drinking Asses-milk And some eased of that gowtish pain by drinking the whey thereof It is thought to help somewhat to the making womens skin white It is certain that Domitius Nero his Poppaea carried still along with her 500 bigbellied Asses and bathed her whole body in the milk on a conceit that it saftned and suppled her skin The blood some say stanches a flux of blood out of the brain Pliny sayes that it is said to cure a quartan ague if the patient drink three drops of the blood taken out of a vein in the Asses-eare in a pinte and a half of water Hartmannus commends the same taken after the ears as extreme good against madnesse Linnen never used afore is thereby softened and bleached whereof a part is softned in a draught of spring-water and the water taken in against frenzy Aelian witnesses the same of Asses flesh and that one Bathylis of Candia was recovered of lunacy thereby it being prescribed him Pliny saith it cures the Tisick especially in Achaja wee read the same in Avicen who addes that it is given in against the falling sicknesse The liver also eaten helps against the same disease but is prescribed to be eaten fasting Others advise it to be drop'd into the mouth mixt with a little of the universall medicine The milt is so effectuall against the spleen that the profit is felt in three dayes usage The same beaten to powder and out of water put on the breasts brings the milk into them if we credit Sextus The fume is good for old matrices as Pliny holds Their Reins in powder given in pure wine help the bladder and to hold the water The Asses genital is conceived sayes Pliny burnt to ashes to make hayr come thick and prevent gray hayrs if smeare on the new shaven with oyl and pounched to powder with lead His right stone drunke in wine or bound to the arme provokes lust Either of them helps against witchraft Wrapping infants in the skin keeps them from frighting A ring made of his hoof if there be no black in it carried about one inclinable to sounding fits keeps him from falling The Asses of the same are also good for that end drunk many dayes together and kneaded with oyl dispersse swellings or bunches Tarentus used it for a bait to take many fishes That they call lichen whether male or scurf or tetter burnt and powderd and laid on with old oyle breeds hayr so that if you annoint but a womans jaw with it shee shall have a beard daubd on with vineger raises from a lethargy or dead sleep Their stale smeard on with clay takes away corns and cures hard flesh saith Marcellus Savanarola hath written that it is good against an ill savour of the nostrils Dioscorides that in drinke it helps the ache and gravell in the reins Wherefore those of old have still used it Of their dung thus Pliny The dung of the Asse-colt voided first after his foaling is called Polea The Syrians minister it in vineger and meth against the spleen The same helps the collick and bloody flux boyld in wine it greatly relievs the pain of the skin In three dayes it cures the kings-evill given but as big as a bean in wine A mares foles dung hath the like efficacy The same is used to stanch blood Tarentinus much commends it moystned in Coriander juice and kneaded with barly-flower for the taking of trachuris and perch I need not speake of their usefulnesse in carriage in the mill in warre and at the plow c. This may be added that pipes are made of Asses bones and are shriller then others and that the Arabs make parchment of the asse-hide and cloath of the hayr Some differences and kinds they may be divided into
his horn is so sharp and strong that what ever he strikes at he shatters or peirces it through There was one seen in the service of the great Cham of Tartary in the Kingdome of Lambris They are lesse then Elephants holding their head downwards like a Swine of a prickling tongue wherewith they get what they meet with black eyed and very like the Rhinoceros Lewis of Barthema of Bononia writes thus of the Unicorns seen by him There are Dens on the one side of the Temple at Mecca wherein are kept two Unicorns that are showen as the manner is for a rarity Concerning the shape The greater resembled a Horse-colt of thirty months old his horn that he bears on his fore-head is about three ells in length the other was a year old his horn grown to four hand breadth The colour of the beast somewhat darker then that of a Sumpter or Pack-horse headed like a Hart short-necked and thin-haired thereabout short-mained and that hanging only on one side Small and slender-legged like a Hinde The feet a little cloven afore Goat-hoofed the feet hairy on the right side He seems feirce and of a nature affecting lovelinesse I adde not what Garzias hath out of Hortus They are said to be found in the Arabian Deserts and to have been seen there by Merchants as also between the Cape of Good-Hope and that they call the Currentes Some are in the Kingdom Basma and Lambris some in the utmost parts of Asia in the Province Macinus between the mountains of India and Cathay where the Serici inhabite Some in the new world The Horn is shewen in many places the most famous are S. Denys in France Venetia Spain Utrecht Helvetia Denmark Hampton-Court in England Windsor and the Gedansian of Empiricus That at S. Denys is of greatest note being rugged not polished blackish and nearest those Ancients describe Writers differ about the Unicorns horns lenth Renodaeus makes him as long as a mans hight he takes it on trust as we do Baccius and Marinus bring it to six cubits Golnitzius his measure is six foot and an half Bellonius makes it up full seven foot Nor do they agree about the weight Cardan saith one hath been seen to weigh seventeen pound and three quarters Golnitzius rises it to five and twenty I with Bellonius should judge the horn to weigh eighteen pound having poysed it in my hand Baccius thinks the Venetian are right Marinus that they are longer then old ones nor so writhed as Aelians and so thin that they cannot be drunk out of Coloured like a smooth Harts-horn and pale not black They are reported at the siege of Bysantium to be conveyed to the Venetian Common-wealth with twelve breast-plates of Imperial Cavaliers The Spanish one hath nothing singular a piece whereof Phil. IV. presented to Cardinal Francis Barbarine an eminent man and most courteous to strang Gentery That at Utrecht is as long as that at Paris and reasonable great much wreathed at top and then growing straiter toward the bottome The outside is of a sand-colour the inside is whither It is held in great account and is shown for a right one so that Colonia Agrippina hath bid a great summe of gold for it That of the Helvetians was found in the year M.D.XX. at the mouth of the River Arula near Brugia white it is within yellowish without without writhings two cubits long but as sweet as musk especially if it be near the fire The Danish one is kept in Fredericks-Burgs Castle above seven Roman-foot long if we except that part within the hollow which Bartholine conceives to be above a foot it is seven fingers about writhed all along and sharp-pointed at top the colour mixt of white and ash-colour and in some of the spaces channeld and chamfered with black and duskish streaks That of the Venetian Merchants was brought out of Germany promising by the bright and divers colour'd shape that it is a right one and the rather because there fall pieces from it if you shave it not like teeth and shavings that can be crumbled but there come thence shavings that are clammy and yeelding as any other cut hornes I can say litle of the Gedanensian one Empiricus returning from Constantinople not long ago magnified it highly More about this beast Aelian tells us saying that among all beasts he hath the must absur'd vile voyce that if other beasts come to him he is gentle but ever fighting with those of his owne kind the males do not onely quarrell but they also with the females so that they kill one other His whole body is very strong but his horn invincible He seeks deserts and goes ever alone wandring At coupling-time the male is tamer and feeds quietly with the female when that time is over and the female begins to swell the male returns to his former fiercenesse and betakes him to his wandring lovelinesse Men say that there were some of their young ones brought to the Prasian-King and that on feast and triumph-dayes they were put together to fight to shew their strength for no man ever remembers that one growen up hath been taken So far Aelian Some add that this beast loves young Virgins so that if one spreads but her lap as he comes he will lay his head there and fall in a slumber and is so taken For their use all know how they are commended for the soverain vertue of their horne against venome for where poyson is it sweats and drops stand on it and so as some think the right horn is knowne Aloysius Mundella commends it against the bite of a mad dog and other mischievous beasts as also of worms The ancient Indian Kings who first arrived at the knowledge of this horne made cups of it for themselves that drinking out of them they might fence themselves against poyson drunkennesse cramp falling sicknesse and other malignant diseases A Iew of Venice made a circle on a table with that horn and cast then a Scorpion and a Spider within it who had not the power to passe that circle after that they being pluckt by it a hand high whether by the shadow of it or the vertue flowing from it they were both kill'd within the space of an hour No wonder then that it is so valued that German Merchants ask'd for one of them 90000 crowns and the Pope setting up a kind of an Apothecaries shop in the Vatican gave 12000 pieces of gold to the Epidaurian Merchants for a piece of an Unicorns horne of the which Austin Ricchus the Popes then chief Physitian used to put now a scruple now 10 grains in wine or cordiall water and administred it with great successe And thus shall serve now to have spoken of the Unicorn we shall say more elsewhere Concerning horn'd Asses I find them cried up in three places namely in India Scythia and Africa Herodotus mentions the African Aelian saith that
woollen cloath and so three dayes renewed and the third day an ox-gall is to be shaven and the shavings mixt with oyl and put in a linnen cloath and three dayes together layd on and then she shall conceive Finally it is strange that is written that some Egyptian women to become fat take in a bath 9 dayes a chirat of Cows-gall dissolved in Cow-pisse About the calves-gall understand that with vineger warmed it takes away Nits it lesses the chops of the eyes bruized with hony and especially Mirrhe and Safran and is very good to put into the eare with a Snakes-slough sprinkled with lees mixt with oyl it drives away gnats The stone in an Ox-gall the Philosophers call it Alcheron it is like a ring bruised to pouder and snuffed up helps the sight and prevents eye-rheums and is good for the falling-sicknesse if you take thereof the quantity of a pea with the juyce of into the nostrills The hide and glue also hath it's use in Phisick Burnt it heals kibes especially out of an old shoe with hony it eats off cankers in sores the ashes of an old soal burnt helps against a bruise from a pinching shoe Glew sod out of Ox-hides especially Bulls and that out of their ears and pizles of very soverain nor is any thing better against burnings But it is often counterfaited nothing more taken out of other leather to cozen you That of Rhodes is truest and therefore used by Painters and Phisitians The best at this day called German is of a light-red-colour very hard britled as glasse and blackish and twice as deere as the other It is called Xylocolla or wood-glue because it is used in gluing wood together others call it Taurocolla or Bulls-glue we owe the invention of it to Daedalus it joyns things firmer then any other thing can Melted in vineger it heals the scab adding lime-wit if it be not gone too far weakened in vineger and with brimstone boild on a soft fire to the thicknesse of hony and stird boyling with a fig-tree sprig applied twice a day it cures itch melted and dissolved the third day it heals and closest wounds made by iron Mixt with vineger and hony it removes Nits It helps teeth boyld in water and rubed on and presently taken of again and then the teeth washt with wine wherein hath been sod sweet Pomegranet-roots drunk with three cups with hot water it helps spitting of blood as also the hot collique and belly-ake if layd on The horne the top of it burnt two spoonfulls weight with hony swallowed in pills helps the Ptisick or short-breath or wheezing as much burnt to pouder with three cups of hot water and a litle vineger helps the Spleen taken three dayes in if fasting The hoof is also medicineable boyled and eaten with mustard it resists poyson burnt and drunk in pottage wine or other liquour it restores milk to womens dried breasts the smoke thereof kills or chases away Mice The Ancledust drunk with hony brings away worms with mulled vineger it lessens the Spleen with wine it fastens the teeth It is frivolous but not to be left out saith Pliny if it be but to please women that the ankle of a white heifer sod 40 dayes and nights till dissolved rub'd on with a linnen cloath makes a clear smooth skin The Hips burnt and drunk stopt fluxes of blood The thin skin moyst from the calving heals a sore face The Stone found in the head drunk out of the same water that the ox drinks helps effectually the head-ake The milke being thick and fat passes not so easily through us yet Pliny saith it loosens the belly and is drunk in the spring to purge because it comes from many herbs whereon the Cows feed hartily It works out poyson especially that that corrodes and inflames particularly it helps against Doryenium Colchicum Hemlock and the sea-hare Warmed and gargled it soon allayes the pain and swelling of the almonds under the eares Taken warme from the Cow it helps an exulcerated stomack A cupfull with so much deer-sewet tried and moyst pitch and Scythian red-oker helps strangely a consumption A black Cows milk with pouder of Sesamum is good to drink for a women that after child-birth vomits blood after fourty dayes The same boyled mitigates and removes fluxus and desire to stool if newly milk and two parts boyled away for the strangury a little hony must be added and if the pain be great lay on the navell dust of Harts-horn or Ox gall mixt with cummin-seed with flesh up-goared Nor are these the prescriptions only of Aëtius Galen and Pliny but our late Physitians prescribe the like and therein they quench a gad of steel nine times and apply it hot to the patient or glister wise Hippocrates prescribed it of old and others mixt with liquour For he when the guts were wounded and the breath came forth beneath apparently by the wound and the breasts emptied advised it to be given with a like quantity of milke wine and water And Gesner also testifies that some cried it up if the liquour mixt with wine and milke were drunk certain dayes in Maries-bath Butter although Pliny say it was a food prized only by Barbarians and poor common people yet Galen and Diosco and others proclaim great vertue to be in it Vitalis de Furno Cardinal and a famous Physitian saith that butter is naturally warm and moyst heat is predominant in it it is viscous and oylie Oft eaten it moystens the stomack and make loos-bodied softens the breast cures ulcers in breast and bowells especially when fresh and new agreeing to mans complexion helps apostumate breasts and lungs it being the proper quality to ripen disperse and cleanse all superfluous humours especially if eaten with hony and sugar Butter resists poyson supples the members softens and helps smeared on eye-smart disperses and ripens impostumes eases sore breasts and lungs and gripings of the bowels supples and loosens shriveled up sinews It is a speciall remedy against inward poyson if hartily drunk melted in hot milk after you have drunk venome for by its fatnesse it stops the passages that the venome reach not suddenly the heart But new butter is thus praise-worthy not so the old c. Thus far the Cardinall Cheese is good against flaxes strangury and colique Hippocrates uses the same against his third sort of consumption Donatus writes that he gave a pellet of Sicilian cheese dipt in hony to a boy troubled with wormes Of the whey hote or cold we shall elsewhere discusse certain it is that it thins and cleanse away the thick humours and brings down the belly to this last purpose the ancients have used it often especially in those which they would purge gently as the melancholy and those that had the falling sicknesse the leprous the scald and those that brake out with blisters over the whole body above all it is good for shortwinded
are good for the falling-sickness Their lungs take away bunches in the flesh roasted prevents drunkennesse shreded helps bruises and makes black scars white And is used for purges The Liver helps blood-shot-eyes and is good for a woman swelled in child-bearing taking in drink and with meat The Milt tosted powder taken in wine resists the collick which yet Pliny somewhere counts it superstition it being among the Magical precepts that the patient must say that he maks a remedy for the spleen and then he must hide and steal it up in his chamber and repeat a Verse three times nine times The Sheeps-bladder Galen advises them to take in drink burnt to powder who let water go from them in sleep Their Gall and honey cleanses the ears and smeared on the head with earth dryes up scurffe with the sewet it eases the Gout The Milk is cried up for wholesome against all kind of venome except the Buprestis and Hemlock Afore your quartan-fit take three cups of it with a dram of Swallows-dung If to a sixt part you adde four peny weight purified Cnicus and you drink the decoction it loosens The same boyled on hot stones is good against fluxes and of an exulcerated belly The Butter that comes from Sheeps-Milke smeared on with hony together with ashes of a dogs head or the womb boyled in oyl takes away dead-flesh growing about the fingers Old Cheese taken with our meat refreshes disentericks or eaten and scraped and taken in wine helps the collick Rams-horns burnt to powder with oyle some give to make the hair curle The ashes of the Trotters with hony heals the bite of a Mouse and a Spider The Curd in a dram of wine helps against pricks and all strokes and bites of the Peterman and other Sea-fishes And is good for Infants drunke out of water when troubled with pend or curdled breast-milke or given out of Vineger Put under or into the nostrils it strenches blood when other things help not The Sewet is taken either simply or for that that is taken from the ribs or call One saith that melt it and dip a cloth in it and lay it on a burnt part it helps It is laid on the kibe-heels with allum If mingled with ashes of womens hair it cures fellons It heals all kind of griefs about the privities mixt with ashes of the pumice and salt that fat taken from the call especially that from the reins The Lambs marrow melted by the fire drunke with oyle of nuts and white sugar dissolves the stone in the bladder The urine of a red or black sheepe mixt with hony is good for the dropsy Their dung a Physitian in Mysia used weakened in vineger to take away Cornes and hard knobs and mingled with rose-salve to close and skin over an ulcer from burning Out of vineger smeard on it works the same effects The pouder out of oyl applied as a cataplasme cures a fresh wound The ashes of the same with salpeter or the ashes of lambs hucklebones are good against the canker and ulcers that will not close Sheeps dung also heat and kneaded allays the swelling of wounds And is good for the colique A mountain-sheeps dung in September shut up the Moon decreasing the day afore gather up early and harden in the Sun and pounce it to pouder and keep it in a glasse or tin vessell for use A spoonfull of it given three dayes out of water cures the colique if a fever goe with it use wine The wool only layd on or with brimstone helps many unknowen griefs and is of that vertue that men put it on medicines The wool of a butting ram taken from between his hornes and burnt is good for the head-ake The ashes in Dioscor opinion draws over a crust hinders dead flesh closes ulcers Men burn it when clean and pickt in a new earthen pot to use as afore Some shear it some pluck it off and clip of the top dry and pick it and put it together into a new earthen pot and drench it in hony Others with lincks set it on fire it being sprinkled with oyle and rub the ashes with their hands putting in water and then let it stand and oft shift the water till it lightly touch but not bite the toung then they lay up and keep the ashes It hath a cleansing vertue to the cheeks Wool taken after sheep-shearing between the spring Aequinoctiall and the Solstice when they begun to sweat that from the neck is most commended Such wool helps green wounds cleansed and broken bones with oly vineger or wine since they soon suck up moysture and by reason of the ranknes of the cattell called Oesypus soften changed or applied seven dayes it heals the bite of a mad dogge and out of cold water heals the splents fingers out of hot oyle it helps running sores Herodotus relates that the Carthaginians sheephards with such wool sindge the veins of the crown of the head of their children when foure years old and some the temple-vein to prevent rheums and catarrs And if the children in finging chance with crampes the sprinkling of goats-pisse helps them If a plowsheard hurt an ox his legs or hoof stoned pitch and grease with brimstone wound up in shorn wool with a red hote iron thrust in cures it The same wool with oyl of roses stanches blood in the nose and another way is good to stop the eares of hearing Blood is also stanched by binding the joynt-ends Oesypus or the foul that cleaves to wool helps disgestion It eases closes supples ulcers It helps the inflammation of the matrice taken with butter and Melilote It cures wounds also taken with barly ashes and rust equally divided it helps also the canker and ulcers It eats out the swelling about ulcers and evens knobby flesh It cures Sint Antonies fire taken with Pompholyx It provokes sleep used with a little Mirrhe washt in two cups of wine It lessens face-spots with Corsick hony that is counted stronger About gathering and preparing it see Aldrovandus The skin of the feet and musles of the ox and sheep long boyled on a soft fire to a gelly taken out and dried in the open ayre when it whistles is commended agains ruptures So much for the medicinall use Sheep are also usefull otherwise outwardly both their fleece and pelts or skins yeeld us stuf for cloathing The Arabian Bedevini weare no other as Vitriacus relates Zeno Citicus and Crates of Thebes sewd Sheeps-skins within their cloaks Wolstan also Bishop of Worcester in England was ever clad in Sheeps-skins because not Leopards but the Lamb of God is celebrated in the Temples They were also used in Tragedies whence the wearers were called Diphtheriai Only beware of the skins of sheepe that dy of the plague for such breed not only lowsinesse but also Sint Anthonies fire That out of Aelian
horned They change colour and are sometimes variously generated The hair differs according to the sex thicker in the males softer and finer in the shee s Festus calls hairy men goatish Pliny denies that they are all horned but you may guesse their age by the horn which is long and sharp In Delos one of the horns is two cubites and weighs six and twenty pound Their eyes which they ever thrust into their corners look diversly at times in the dark they shine and dart forth light They are flat-nosed The shee hath no upper teeth besides the double-ones afore and the rest are fewer then those of the hee-goat They have all a shaggy-bard the Latines call it aruncus spirillus the Greeks Ereggos Krygkes The little that hang out of their jaws Festus calls Noneolas Varro Mammilias teats Pliny Lacinias rags others Warts The females have two dugs slender feet Some have thought as the Egyptians sayes and others that they breath by the ears Philes saith the signe is that if you stop their noses you offend them not Especially the wild ones who are said to have a passage betwixt the horns to the lungs which if you stop with wax you choke them Barthol Eustathius credits it the rather because he saith he hath found some such thing in man though Aristotle is against it They say the liver if you take it out stirs long after They have more bellies then one The milt is round The sharp artery is like that in man As for their place they abound in the North. In Candy is great store because there are no Wolves In Ithaca Homer calls Aigiboton goatish The best Goats-cheese is in the Helvetian Rhetia Switserland especially in the hilly-ground about the Fabarian baths They are found also in Achaia Africa Nubia Sardinia Cephalonia Miletum Damascus India the New-world in Spaine Corsica and else-where as we shall see anone in their differences The ground fittest for them the Greeks call Aigiboton c. Their food is manifold they delight most in shrubs the wild Cytisus Oken-leaves If they eat too many Acorns it causes abortion They love the Olive and so were said to be hated by Minerva and they will crop young Vines wherefore they were sacrificed to Bacchus Figs and Wheat Ash and Tamarisk Goats-beard and Dogs-rose Beans make them full of milk and cinque foyle if you give it five dayes together afore you let them drink And to this end some ty dittany under their belly In some places they are greedy after Hemlock c. Ladanum also a sleepy plant such as Arabia boasts of it may be this chance because of the offensivenesse of the smell Goats hurtful otherwise to all green things covets most sweet shrubs as if they knew their worth they will crop the stalks of sprigs that are full of sweet juice and wipe from their stinking beard that that thence drops thereon This they roul in dust and bake in the Sun and therefore are goats-hair found in Ladanum Later Writers tells us that the Arabian woods are made waste by the feeding of Goats and that juice cleaves to all the beards Thus is it also at Cyprus they say and that there sticks to Goats-beards and knees the flower of the Ivy being croped off afore the dew be off after the Sun dispelling the mist and the day clearing up a dust cleaves to the dewy goats-beards and thence ladanum is kammed out Their commonnest food is Spire-grasse and Capriola because better tasted then others that they delight in salt torturers well know for Dracula the Hungarian Governour oft cut out the soles of captive Turks feet and rubbed salt in and used Goats to lick it out again to increase the torment For their drink puddle standing water or long keept is disallowed After noon when stirred they drink most It is strange that at Zant about the season when the Etesiae wind use to blow the Goats stand gaping toward the North and that serves them without drinking The Goat is very lustfull for they at seven months old and while they suck begin to couple and with greater heat then sheep The yearlings couple three or four times if presently after a great rain falls it causes abortion They go five months and bring for most part but one at once sometimes two three four In good aire and well fed they bear twice a year It continues eight years Aristotle saith all their life long and that they bring twins if the Sire and Dam be of a lusty kind In the third year it failes Fatnesse makes them barren The meetest coupling time is the Winter or Solstice They conceive in November and bring forth in March when the shrubs begin to swell Some use one Hee for ten females some to fifteen some to twenty Rubbing their genitals with much salt and nitre and annointing them with peper and nettle-berries makes them lusty About their venery and coupling read Aristotle his History of four-footed-beasts They are lovers of sheep the Tiger the Sargus with the Poley and Fringo Offer a kid to a Tiger to eat he will fast two dayes after the third day he will desire some other food if he have it not he digs a hole yet he spares the kid as if it were his own kinde saith Plutarch The fish Sargus delights in their very shadow and loves to touch it while they stand on the shore but is by nature disabled from leaping ashore The Pulegium or Poley being tasted by the Goat makes them bleat whence some Greeks call it Blechon If a Shee-goat crop an Fringo stalk and carry it in her mouth the whole heard shall straight leave their pasture and as astonished at a new sight shall not give over gazing till the Goat-herd take away the stalk They hold enimity with the Wolfe Pard Elephant the Goat-sucking-bird they hate mans spittle hony and the Evonymus the Vine c. For the Wolfe devours them the Pard seazes them the Elephant terrifies them the Caprimulgus sucks them so that the udder mortifies and the Shee-goat turns blind upon it Aelian saith they avoid mans spittle Hony taken in weakens them the leaf or fruit of the Evonymus were but tasted by them kills them unlesse they purge it out again by Anochus If they drink water wherein Rose-tree-leaves are steeped they dy Savine is also poyson to them A young sprouting Olive-tree will not bear if a Goar but lick it The lung rosted prevents drunkennesse If they eat Conyza they dy with thirst The herb Aegolethrum in Lycia is their bane whence it hath the name Goat-bane Their voice is a kind of muttering or murmuring whence Homer calls them Mekades In Latine they and sheep are said balare to bleat The Hees are said Phrimassein to grumble Varinus saith they cry Ena ena They are ever stirring and swift and nimble Varro saith R.
R. l. 2. c. 3. that wild-Goats will frisk away from a stone above sixty foot They can better away with cold then sultry heat especially the breeders that conceive in deep winter They love woody furzy shrubby places much better then plain pasture-ground or medow and thrive best on clifty shadowy-land They hang so strangly on clifts and rocks that they who view them from beneath would verily believe they were falling whence the rocks are called Aigilipes and the flock Aipopolion from their loftinesse and clambring They skip and frisk wantonly about near brinks of rivers browzing on the banks Authours are not agreed about the quality of their flesh Hippocrates holds it raw windy in the stomack begetting crudities and belching but more harmlesse in Summer their feed being better At the falling of the leaf it is most unwholesome In Winter it breeds somewhat better blood Some affirm that though it be rank it nourishes and strengthens much Clitomachus of Carthage a follower of the new Academie saith that a wrestler of Thebes out-went all of that age in strength because kid or goat-flesh was his diet and that the toughest and hardest of digestion with eating whereof his sweet was rank and rammish Homer in Aâ—hillus his entertaining of Agamemnon his Ambassadours shews it to be souldiers diet The milk is as moderate as most kindes except womens breast-milk Yet is very different according to their age feed season of the year and length of time after they bring forth their young without hony it is dangerous food curdling in the stomack And it troubles the belly a little unlesse eaten with scammony and other things In some parts of the East those that are weaned at three months are wont to be fed with it The cheese follows the nature of the milke But hee-goats flesh is worst of all to dresse breeding ill blood and is most corrupt and offensive at coupling time And yet it hath been a dish at a feast in Antiphanes as bad and rank as it is The testicles and liver also are much condemned About kid writers are not agreed It was a delicate with the Patriarches under the old Testament And Ascraeus the Poët calls it good juicy nourishment And Platina after Galen cries it up for the best houshold fare easily disgested as having litle dros in it nourishing and breeding well tempered blood But Brujerinus cries it downe because shee-goats are feverish and therefore the kid cannot but be unwholsome Yet Jul. Alex. confessing it indeed to be hot yet the tendernes of the kids age is an allay to the hot and dry quality of the dam and especially if the kid suck yet not so much for the age as the nourishment which takes of from the heat and makes tender and juicy Heathen also of old made it a messe in their feasts seasoning it with Laser and other herbs The blood made into a dish was called Sanguiculus or blooding which the Laconians call Melas Xoomos or black-meat and Pollux Aâ—matian blood-meat Apycius will tell you how to dresse the liver and lungs The use of this creature in medicine is great Pliny speaks of a thousand medicines to be fetched from them Democritus magnifies that is borne alone The Magitians prescribed goats flesh rosted against a mans carcasse burning against the falling sicknes Hee-goats flesh sod in water breaks impostumes and divers ulcers The Porredge drives away Spanish flies Drusus the Tribune of the people is said to have drunke goats blood when hee with wannes and envy accused Q. Cepio of poysoning him The same washes out spots And fried it stops the pain in the bowells and the flux of the belly as Galen and Dioscorides relates Hee-gaots blood soon ripens make it hot mingled with somewhat waxy it eases the gout helps ill-eyes that of one fed with diereticall herbs dried to pouder and taken with parsly in wine is very good against the stone See in Aldrovand how and when it must be gathered Some call this medicine Gods hand Authors of great note as Scaliger and Ioubert c. say that goatsâ—blood can soften and dissolve the Adamants glasse heated therein and in juyce may be made as soft and yeelding as wax or clay and wrought into any shape but dip it in water it shall return to its former firmnes This is a secret of Geberus Albertus and an ingenious Bituricensian glasmaker which when hee was near death hee freely revealed to Antâ—Mizoaldus as himself relates The same mixt with vineger is good against vomiting and hauking and spitting The whey is good for them that have been bitten in right gut or the colon because it soon congeals It is very loosning taken with melanthins and brimstone and takes away morphew and spots and itch With goos grease deers marrow rosin and chalk it closes chapped lips If an oxes neck swell it is a golden soveraign help with soft pitch and ox-marrow and goat-sewet and old oyl of each an equall portion and unsod With chalk it scatters swellings with wax it stops spreading of ulcers with pitch and brimstone it is through healing and with hony and juyce of bramble it stops the running of the reines The fat of it self alone helps the sting of the green Spanish fly Magitians commend it against the falling sicknes with bulls gall boild in equall portions and put up in litle gallbags it must not touch the ground forsooth and is to be drunk out of water at doore The same with Ptisana or barly unhusked boyled is good for the colique Goats-fat boyled with barly rhoe and cheese they give for the bloody flux and taken in with juyce of barly unhusked And helps much against diseases in the bowells supt in in cold water It is also good against the dropsy Those of the Canary Islands annoint their flesh with goat-sewet and juyce of certain herbs to thicken their skins the better to endure cold because they goe naked It is used also against the gout with shee-goats dung and saffran and mustard with Ivy stalks bruised or the flower of wild-cucumber The same is an ingredient into Pomatum good for chapped lips The marrow next to deers and calves-marrow is commended The liver rosted and layd with oyl of mirrhe on the navell helps the cholique and is better then the same boild with sowr wine and drunk The same is good for Nyctalopia and against the falling sicknes and for convulsions It is also commended against the biting of a mad dog and layd on it takes away the feare of water they say which the bitten dread Hippocrates prescribes sheeps or goats liver buried in embers to a woman in child-birth sweld to be eaten for four dayes and old wine to be drunk therewith The gall yeelds many medicines It helps against venome from a wild Weezel with allom ashes it remooves the itch with fullers earth and vineger it helps scurf so
thickets they seek after fresh pasture but ever return home again One uses like a Captain to lead the Herd they feed all day at high-noon they seek shade they are fearfull even to a proverb Cantharion Arcas was by the oracle nicknamed a Deere They are good at leaping whence a place near Frankfort hath the name where two stones are erected in memory of one that being hunted leaped 60 foot and upon a loaden cart to save himself When hardly chased they will rest themselves till the dogges draw near them When they despair of escaping they leave the woods fly into the fields and sometimes into towns and houses for shelter for most part they go with the wind Their sagacity and wit in deluding the dogges is strange If they are hunted by Eager-dogges they gather into parties then if pursued they fly among the Deere kept tame about house sometimes they mingle with the Herd to shrowed themselves sometimes they will drive the hunted Deere from them they will amuse the dogges by their uncertain steps going back the same wayes or where other Deere use to tread to confound the dogges sent they will run round and leap to put the dogges to alosse There hath been one seen to run among a Herd of oxen and leap on an oxes back and to ride him along way and trailing the hinder-feet on the ground to put the dogs to a cold sent They have been seen to leap into trees in shady places They eat Cinara against venomous grasse and crabs against the bite of Spiders They are very carefull that the Sun-beams shed not on their fresh wounds to purifie them afore they be closed With eating Dittany they can draw arrowes out of their bodies which goats also do They swim over seas by herds one resting the head on the others buttock and take turns when the first is weary This is most observed in the passage from Cilicia to Cyprus though they see not land they smell it They put the weakest last and venter not out till the wind favours them They fatten in summer and then lurk in corners that their weight may not make them an easy prey to the dogs They hide themselves also by day when they have cast their horns and keep in shady places to avoid annoyance from flies and feed in the night till their horns sprout again then they come into the Sun to confirm and harden them And when they can rub them against trees without pain they dare venture abroad again Some say they bury their horns some say but one the horn is seldome found which is medicinable In Epire they bury their right else-where their left horn In Parks neither though they cast their horns yearly When they have eat a Serpent that the poyson hurt them not they go to a river and plunge themselves in all but the head yet drink not till by tears they have sweet out the venome which the cold water expels at the eyes Eating serpents clears their eye-sight when taken they become not only tame but will come when called Nay you may briddle and sadle them It is certain that in Ptolomeis Triumphant-shew there were seven brace of Stags seen coupled in chariots Heliogabalus exhibited them by quaternions so yoked together They were to Mithridates as it were a life-guard Sertorius the Generall of the Spanjards the Roman carried a white one alwayes about with him making the world beleeve it was Diana Ptolomy used one to understand Greeke In fawning they forsake not beaten wayes no more then coverts They purge themselves with the herb Seselis that they may fawn with more ease after fawning they eat their after-birth that enwrapped their fawn then tast of a certain herb and then return to their fawns These they bring not up all one way the tenderest they carefully hide among thick shrubs or grasse and chastise them with taps of their feet to make them ly still and not disclose themselves When grown up a litle they exercise them to run and leap gapps A Shepheards Pipe and singing will intice them from their pasture As for their senses if they prick up their ears they are quick of hearing if they hang them downe they are easily surprised That they are sharpsighted their great ey is a token Authors are of divers opinions about their usefulnesse in food Some say their flesh is tender and light of disgestion and better tempered if cut afore their horns come Galen holds it to be hard of concoction and melancholy like Asses-flesh Simon Sethi saids it breeds black coller and that you must beware of it in summer because they eat serpents then If often eaten it brings the palsie in winter it is safer food Some say fawns-flesh is best Of old they praised the flesh till they were three years old The older the dryer and harder In rutting time their flesh is rank and rammish of smell like goats-flesh Avicen thinks it breeds quartan-agues But Pliny saith that he knew Gentle-women that used to tast it every morning and were for a long time free of agues especially if they dy of one wound Others by constant eating of venison promise themselves vivacity and spritefulnesse The liver is thought to be naught The horn newly shot forth hath been counted a delicate boyled and then fried in gobbets In Medicine many parts thereof are usefull The hair burnt under the belly prevent miscarrying of women The skin shaved with a pumice with vineger cures S. Anthonies fire The same fastened on the doore with the right feet scare away all venemous creatures The same helps against urine going from a man against his will in bed The marrow easens pain drives away serpents helps against scalding taken in water eases the pain in the bowelles allays the bloudy-flux taken glisterwise softens the womb helps in Lint monthly termes The sewet eases the gout takes away face-freckles burnt and mixt with a tosted oyster cures kibes and chilblaius layd fresh on cures the exulcerations of the womb The brains Rhasis commends against the pain in the hips and sides and against bruises The lungs Pliny prayses against corns chappings and hard flesh Marcellus sayes it helps feet pinched by strait shoes layed often fresh on it Dried in the smoak and poudered taken in wine it helps the Ptisique The ashes burnt in an earthen pot helps against sighing and pursines The pizle dried to powder taken in wine is given against the vipers bite smeard on with wine it makes a bull lusty dried it provokes urine and helps the wind collique if you drinke the water wherein it is washed Pliny speaks of the Magicall use or rather abuse of it The bones are good against fluxes Sextus saith the knee blade is good against priapisme if carried about one The heart burned with the skin and horn smeared on with oyl cures wounds The heart-bone is counted
a preservative The stone in the heart or the other prevents abortion The crudled blood of a fawn killed in the Does belly is a speciall remedy against a Serpents bite and drunk is good against the bite of a mad dog as also if you have eaten hemlock and toadstools The urine helps the spleen and the wind in the stomack and bowells The teares in wine bring vehement sweats It is round and bright-yellow and hath black streaks if you but touch it it withdraws as if it stirred it self The Harts-borne is of speciall use It helps burning feavers provokes sweat is soveraign against poyson and many diseases The inhabitants of Florida bore holes in their childrens lips and fill them therewith perswading themselves that that makes them poyson proof Aldernacus makes an eye-salve of it with frankincense burnt lead opium c. in rain-water Infused in vineger or poudered some smear it on against freckles and ring-worms burnt the smell helps the falling sicknes with lentile and deer-sewet it takes spots out of the face Poudered with spunges wherein there are stones in a like quantity of wine and water dayly drunke it helps the kings-evill Snuft into the nostrills with Sandaracha it takes away swelling there with mastick and salt-amoniack it whitens the teeth With vineger it eases tooth-ake Burnt with wine it fastens the teeth With tragacanthus it cures the Haemoptoicum half-burnt it helps the bloody flux with a litle livesulphur and a newlayed eg it stops vomiting Burnt with oxymel it dries the spleen It helps the collique Drunk with yvory it is good against worms Some make cakes of it with chalk holy seed a rosted eg and hony It is used also against womens greefs stopping of the mother For the differences of Deere In new Spain is a kind called Macar Some are red some white all over These the Indians call Kings of Harts Yztak Makanne Others they call Aculhuame The lesser Quauhtlamacame that of timerous become generous and wounded are so fierce that they assault their hunters and oft kill them Others like them are called Thalhuicamacame of the same bulk and nature but not so couragious The least are Tamamacame perhaps a kind of goats In Duarhe Xapida and other parts of America they herds of Deere as we of oxen breeding and fed in and near the house They let them loose by day to seek their pasture in the woods at even they returne to their fawns shut up in stalls they milk them and have no other milk nor cheese made of any other milk In some western parts there chased and wounded in hunting they seeke an herb called by the Barbarians Atochielt whereby they refresh themselves and recover their swiftnesse It is more usefull to them then Ditany In Virginia the Deer are longer tayled then ours and their horn-tops bend back In America is a race of them called Seovassen much lesse then ours and with lesse heads their hair hanging down like Goats among us In new Mexico they have hairy long tailes as Mules and they are as great or greater then Mules and very strong A Spanish Captain had a brace to draw his coach See Aldrovand about the Cervopalmatus We have said already out of Julius Capitolinus that the memorable wood of Cordianus is painted in the Beaked-house of Cn. Pompey that among other pictures there are two hundred Palm-herts the which Gesner at first thought to be all one with the bread-horned Goats but after when John Caius a British Phisitian sent out of Britain these horns to him he changed his mind yeelding it to be a Palm-deere The horns being longer and thicker then a Deers usually are In Persia about Schamachia Karabach and Morage there are beasts like Does yellowish with horns bending backwards without knobs which the Turks call Tzeiran the Persians Aku. ARTICLE VIII Of the Tragelaphus and the Tarandus or Busse THe Tragelaphus seemes to have taken his name from his resembling the Hee-goat and the Hart. Some call him Hippelaphus because he is somewhat like a Horse he having a mane and being greater and grosser then a Stage The Germans call him Brandthirsch either because he is blacker then the Deer or because he haunts the places where charcole is made and feeds on the grasse growing thereabout He is of greater bulk and strength then a Deer Hee hath thick black hair on his throat and long on the shoulders He differs from the Deer therein only and in his beard The ridge of his back is ash-colour the belly duskish the hair about his peezle cole-black They are found not only about the river Phasis as Pliny mistakes but also among the Arachosians and are taken also in the Torantine and Konigsteinian wildes of Misnia near Bohemia The blackish Deer in England differ little from them De Tarandus or Busse is called by the Barbarians Pyrandrus and Pyradus by the Northern folk Rehenschier by Hezychius Chandaros He is as big as an Ox headed like a Stage nor unlike shaggy like a Beare but white-hayred His hide so tough that they make breast-plates thereof Thick breasted cloven and hollow hoofed and loose for in going he displaies them So fleet and light of foot that he scarce leaves any print of his footsteps in the snow outrunning the beasts that ly in wait for him in the vallies His horns are lofty that are crosse beamed from the very forehead a knotty branch is in the midst that branches out again into broader The horns are white and streaked as with small veins They differ from the Elks-horns in height from the Harts in breeth from both in colour and numerousnesse of branches When he runs he rests them on his back for while he stands still the lower branches even cover his forehead with these lower he is said to breake the ice to come by drink His food is wood-fruit and mosse on trees He makes himself lurking holes in the Northerne mountains and in hard frosts comes to Mosiberg and other hills in Norwey Men take them for household uses They bring him to high-way journies and the Husbandmen to work of husbandry No wild flesh is more delicate They live together in herds and are seen in the vast Northern wildernesses by thousands together The females branch not They are found in Norwey Swethland Lapland and Poland There were once a brace brought bridled sadled and trapped to Augusta of the Vindelici They change colour through feare taking the colour of what they come near be it stone or wood white or green to shrowd themselves like the Polypus in sea and the Chamaeleon on land but these latter are smoother and fitter for that purpose those are rough and it is strange they should change colour But what for a Busse this is whether the Turo or Rangifer is uncertain I have given you his print here as near the truth as I could ARTICLE IX Of the Rangifer IN the description of
them run made Green pasture hurts them They eat flesh also mens carcases nay they spare not their own pigs nor hens and geese in winter They root up worms they feed on snails and wood-tartoyses Sixty dayes will fatten them especially if you hold them fasting three dayes in the beginning To fatten them with figs till they burst again was Apicious his invention The English are a year fatning them which makes their pork firme and dainty where a Sow becomes so fat that she cannot stand nor goe but must be carried on a cart In Lusitania the farther end of Spain was a Swine killed two ribs whereof were sent to Lucius Volumnius the Senator that weighed three and twenty pound and there were two foot and two fingers from the skin to the bone Varro saw in Arcadia a Sow so fat that she could not rise and that a Rat had eaten into her flesh and made a nest therein and laid her young ones there Gesner relates the like of Basil. Thirst in Summer troubles them Grape-kernels in wash makes them drunk They gender from eight months old to their seventh or eigth year They litter twice a year and sometimes twenty at a litter they go four months with pig They are prone to cast their farrow the pigs are piged with teeth saith Nigidius One Boar serves ten Sowes They couple when the Moon wains and that often and aforenoon commonly when the Boar of rages and will tear a man with his tusks especially one in white cloaths They litter fewest at first time more at next and though old they bate not they pig eight and ten sometimes eighteen at a time some say as many as they have teats A white Sow is thought most fruitful The Winter-pigs are small and thrive not The Helvetians prefer March-pigs In hot Regions winter ones are best The Sow having littered gives to the first pig the former teats being fullest of milk Every pig knows it's teat and keeps to that alone Take away the pigs she grows barren leave her one only she brings it well up If you give acorns to a Sow big with pig you hazard the casting her farrow Swine hold antipathy with the Elephant who also cannot endure their grunting A Wolf also fears it and dars not venture on an herd of them Salamanders they devour without danger Ointment of Amaracus is bane to them The Weesel and they are foes Hemlock kills them In Scythia Scorpions dispatch them with one stroke The Horse abhors his filthy smell ugly grunting and filthy breath They cast not their teeth but after eating new corn their teeth are ever weak nature so punisheth their otherwise untameable greedinesse If they loose not their eyes nor eat themselves dead they live fifteen some twenty years The disease that most troubles them is a swelling like hailstons that lurks unseen while they live but cut one up it shews it self nor is there scarce any without three at the least whereto those are more liable the flesh of whose thighs neck and shoulders are moyst we call them meazles They cleave to the lower part of the tongue a Hog is knowen to be meazled by the bristles plucked from the back if the roots be bloody If they come out of a hot into a cold place and are suffered to ly down if you stir them not there is a kind of convulsion in all their members They are also troubled with hog-lice and in Summer unlesse you often stir them they are taken with a lethargy They are troubled also with cough sqincy swellings and loosnesse unlesse they drink their fill they become shortbreathed They are most brutish filthy lustful and greedy by nature and seem to have a soul only as salt to keep them from stinking As bathing is mans delight so wallowing in the myre is theirs Gryllus in Plutarch praises their modesty and continence and prefers them afore men and women Though they are ravenous yet they will not eat a dead hog Their greedinesse is insatiable They know mans voyce They have been known to swim home again having been stollen and the ship cast away Their voice is grunting And to say the truth with Pliny no creature yields more matter for gluttony to work on then it near fifty several savoury dishes may be made of Swins-flesh Livy celebrats a feast of a Chalciden-Hoast set off with exquisite variety consisting hereof Homer tells of what value it was in the Heroique-age of the world the servants fed on lean the Masters on fat pork The solemnity of the Saturnals was celebrated almost with no other however no daintier food and their riot came to that height that they set whole ones and those stuffed on the table whence came the names Garden and Trojan-pork One part rosted another boyled and killed after a peculiar fashion The Pigs are counted daintiest Yet the Jews will not touch Swins-flesh it being forbidden by their Law the Arabians forbear it the Mahumetans also who feigne that Mice breed in Swins-snouts and the Moors Tartars and the Pessinunty of old But that of the Delphaci is too moyst and breeds raw humours Some kind is good of digestion by reason of the similitude it hath with mans body and nourisheth more then other food How strengthning it is the example of Wrestlers shews that used to feed thereon It is not so grosse as Beef Hippocrates condemns pork The Sow of a middle age is sweetest yonger if it ly long in the stomack corrupts Choyce ones come from Cicilia Apicius drest Pigs on sundry fashions whence the names of farcil liquaminous rost Vitellian Flaccian Laureate Frontaninian Oenogerate Celsilian and the rest The liver is preferred afore all the rest if the Hog be fed with figs dryed The Ancients prized the neck the gammon the flitch c. Of the flesh and the rest are made sausages puddings c. Of all which elsewhere God willing Of their Medicinal use Gesner treats most accuratly a decoction of their flesh helps against the poyson of the fly Buprestis The warm blood is good against warts smeared on keeping them from growing The grease of a male sucking pig gelt that especially about the rim of the belly is by Apothecaries used in their oyntments and by Physitians to soften and disperse humours The bones broken tied about bacon in boyling makes it firme on a sudden Bruised with broom it helps the pain in the knees With chalk smeared on it is good against wax-kernels Drunk in wine with salt on it helps cattel that have eaten Hemlock The Liver taken with wine helps against the biting of any venemous thing rosted it stops a loosnesse The Bladder provokes urine if it have not touched the ground laid on the privities Any thing about a Boar burned helps those who cannot hold their water The Stones kept long and stamped in Sows-milk is good for the falling-sicknesse The greatest
they see a hunter but if one of their pigs be hunted they fly not not though one be alone but shee will rush on the huntsman they whet their teeth ere they fight though they in combate among themselves yet if they spy Wolves they combine against the common foe and hasten to help as soon as they heare the cry Fulvius Hirpinus was the first of the Gowndorder that had a parke for wild Boares and other wild and not long after L. Lucullus and Q. Hortensius imitated him How savoury meat they are is well knowen Servilius Rullus father to that Rullus who in Cicero his Consulship proclaimed the field or Agrarian law was the first Roman who set a whole Boar on his table at a feast Some such were a thousand pound weight that the Romans had to their suppers thence called Milliary from their weight Consult Apicius about the manner of seasoning them The flesh is much better then common porke soon disgested and very nourishing begetting a thick and glevy juice Heliogabalus for ten dayes together shewed on his table the paps of sowes that had newly farrowed three hundred a day On the day of Lentulus his instalment when he was made Flamen he had at his supper such pappes and teats with loyns and heads of brawn Wild Boares have also their place in Phisick The brain with the blood is commended as souverain against serpents and carbuncles in the privities Bacon boiled and bound about broken parts suddenly and strangely settles them heals men annoint with the fat of roses The pouder of the cheek-bones heals spreading sores The teeth shavings disperses the pleurisy The lungs mixt with hony some put under their feet when hurt by a strait shoos The liver rayses from a lethargy and helps mattery-ears if drop'd in Drunke in wine fresh and unsalted it stays a loosnesse The small stones found therein poudered help the stone The galle warme dissolves swellings the ashes of the hoof burnt sprinckled in drink provokes urine The claws burnt and bruised helps those that pisse abed The dung dried drunke in water or wine stanches blood eases an old pain of the side taken in vineger helps ruptures and convulsions and parts out of joynt with a serecloath and oyl of roses Fresh and hot it is good against running of the nose Kneaded with wine a plaster of it draws out what sticks in the body Poudered and searsed and kneaded with grasse-hony it helps the joynts Men pour the pisse into mattery eares The bladder boyled and eaten helps those that cannot hold their water See more in Gesner The Indians have a wild Boare of a strange nature on their mountains they call Koya Metl and by six other names like ours but lesse and not so handsome with the navell on the back and about the reins strange to behold pinch it and a watry humour gushes out yet it is properly no navel but a kind of soft grisly fat and under is nothing but as in other beasts as is well known by the dissecting of him Some thinke that he breaths that way He is noysome he gnashes with his tusks horridly and is leaner and slenderer then ours He is fierce The huntsmen climbe trees a herd of these Zaini bite at and teare the body of the tree not being able to come at the men who from above wound them with bore-spears They go in herds and choose a leader and as men report the least and vilest of the herd old and feeble nor part they company till he be slain they will dy ere they forsake him Some ascribe the like to the Bachirae They abhor the Tiger The captain of the Zaini calls of his kind more then three hundred together and conducts them as a Generall his forces with these he sets on the Tiger who though the fiercest of all American wild beasts is yet overmastered by multitude but not with a great destruction of the Zaini many of whom have been found lying dead with the Tigre and but a few left to ring their knell Hee bites shrewdly when first taken but when tamed men take pleasure in him His flesh is like porke or brawn but tougher and not so sweet his bristles are sharp and party-cloured black and white He feeds on acorns roots and other mountain-fruit and also on worms and such vermine as are bred in moyst-fenny places Their toes are some longer then other their tayls are short and their feet unlike those of ours one of their hinder-feet having no claw The flesh of the Indian wild Bores is moyster and wholesomer then ours but unlesse the navell of the Zainies be pared off they putrifie in one day Wee give you the picture of him with the Jajacu Kaaigora of the Marckgrave Ampliss de Laet had one very tame but died with eating moyst feed as it seemed Valckenburg calls that navell an udder but hee mistakes since it is well known that the young suck not at that part TITLE II. Of the vvater-cloven-hoofed Beasts CHAP. I. Of the Hippotame or River-Horse FOllowing Aristotle hether I refer the River-Horse though others and perhaps more properly to another head Hee is called an Horse not from his shape but his greatnesse Hee is stiled the Horse of Nile and the Sea-ox and the Sea-hog that afore resembles an ox in the rest of the body a swine called a Sea-Elephant from his vastnesse and the whitenesse and hardnesse of his teeth and the Elephant of Egypt the Rosmarus the Rohart the Gomarus in Pretebans country Writers differ in describing him Some say that hee is five cubites high and hath ox-hoofs three teeth sticking out each side of his mouth greater out then any other beasts eared tayled and neighing like the horse in the rest like the Elephant he hath a mane a snout turning up in his inwards not unlike an horse or asse without hair taken by boats Bellonius saw a small one at Byzantium cow-headed beardard short and roundish wider jaw'd then a lion wilde nostrills broad lips turning up sharp teeth as a horse the eyes and tong very great his neck short tayled like a hog swag-bellied like a sow his feet so short that they are scant foure fingers high from the ground But Fabius Columna describes him most accurately from the carcasse of one preserved in salt brought by a Chirurgion called Nicholas Zerenghus from Damiata into Italy hee saith that he was liker an ox then a horse and about that size leg'd like a bear thirteen foot long from head to tayl foure foot and an half broad three foot an half high squat-bellied his legs three foot and an half long and three foot round his foot a foot broad the hoofs each three inches groutheaded two foot and an half broad three foot long seven foot about in compasse his mouth a foot wide snout-fleshy and turning up litle-eyed each an inch wide and two long the ears about three the bulke thick the
first white after of a clayish colour at length waxes black It smells strong at first to wonder men being layd in the open ayr and hardened it obtains that most gratefull fragrancy Some will have it to be his seed It is gathered in a silver spoon or one of brasse or horn every day a dram If you vex him with a small rod hee yeelds more at a time Some are said to pisse civet at a set time of the year Civet is best kept in horn There are some nobles of Ulyssipone that gaine thence yearly fifteen hundred pounds It is of use in Phisick and otherwise A grain put on hot bread applied to the navell eases the collique It is one good ingredient against giddinesse and apoplexy smeared on the nostrills temples and crown of the head It opens the mother Some adulterate it with ox-gall storax and hony It is used in preparing Cypres-pouder sope-balls strong-waters oyls spirits and perfumes CHAPTER XIII Of the Hare HE is called Lepus and Levipes light-foot from his fleetnesse or his soft going by reason of his shaggy feet Derived from the old Aeolick Lepori or from his uncertain footing Leioos that it is hard to trace him In Greeke Liporis Lagoos by the Athenians by the Ionians Lagos And Dasypous from his shaged feet and from his swiftnesse doubtlesse Dromalos Ptox Tachines In Candy Kekenas by Aristotle Trochos His head is short and round neck narrow round soft long prick-eared legs strait light breast not fleshy back-bone round breast sinking thighs light those afore near one another behind stradling the whole body pliable heart very great About Briletum Therne the Chersonesus the Propontis they seeme double livered The gristle under the fore corner of the ey is broad there lies somewhat near the brain like a worme the body round like a vault not found in other beasts The ear-tip thin and transparant as a cats Among the toothed and single-bellied beasts this alone hath cur'd They are everywhere both in hote and colder climates White ones are brought out of Africa In the Indian Isle Mazzua they abound so the natives everywhere kill them Their plenty on mount Athos is grown to a proverb They frequent uninhabited places most where huntsmen least trouble them In Ithaca are none nor live they if brought thether Of their food Bargeus hath composed nine queint Verses The summe is They nibble on rank grasse and corn-stalks and strings of herbs in the earth and soft barks of trees and moyst books apples acorns fitches milt elms-leaves especially wild mint water-cresses and betony and pennyroyall They gender averse as all other beasts that pisse backward They couple all the year especially in spring They admit of superfaetation Aelian speaks of pregnant leverets found in a Hare cut up In the time of Antiochus Gonata two Hares in Astypalaea in a short time bred above six thousand And all Geron an Isle of the Scarian sea was within a while pestered from one Hare big with young They breed in forrests in the most solitary places two three sometimes four at once you may know the female by the long head thick body longer ears and grisly hair inclining to black on the back and by her many doubles when hunted The male hath red shoulders and long hairs in the midst the head shorter and blunter the beard and brow hairs longer the ears shorter and broader Afore the hounds he will run strait on ten miles together They hate Eagles crows Weesels Foxes and Dogs They live seven years Their age may be gues'd by the clefts of their dung by the mouth of their forme Their voyce is squeaking or mourning They are well-sighted and sleep with their eyes open and are quick of hearing The noyse of shaken leaves makes them run and use their ears to guide them in their course when they go to sleep that their forme may not be found they run too and fro with doubles and then take a leap into their hole where they lies with their forelegs together and their ears layd squat on their shoulders They love to sit abroad in the Sun in fair weather They love the place best where they were bred Are easily tamed but dy if too fat yet on the least scope given they run away to their old liberty and fall to their first wildnesse They seldome grow fat in the woods because perhaps they live in fear Against winter they provide their house in Sunny places in summer Northward They run far for food on purpose to keep themselves long winded by dayly breathing and to use their feet To amuse the hunters they run through windy wayes shunning shrubs least their hair should stick thereon and so yeeld sent to the dogs They know how to proportion their course as the dogs are slower or fleeter and they lurk when hunted among clods because they are of their colour Jews may not eat them but among the Gentiles after Attalicus the Cydonian had made Hare a dish at his feasts it became a dainty ever after and was thought to make the face fair For certain Alexander Severus ate it dayly and Martiall writes something that sounds that way As for the temper of Hares flesh those of two or three months old leverets of six at most are most juicy and of easiest digestion if older as above a year old it breeds grosse blood yet there are jolly huntsmen that eat it every day But that Cato Censorinus prescribes it and pot-herbs to the sick it must be meant of young Leverets But those that live on hills or heaths feeding on Pennyroyall c. are much better then those that frequent waterish places They taste best as cold weather comes in See Ambrosin about the dressing of them In Phisick no part almost of the Hare that is not usefull even the very excrements The Head burnt with Bears-grease or vineger helps shedding the hair the Brain helps children in breeding teeth if oft rubbed on the gum drunk in wine it helps those that cannot hold their water the Heart is tied on those that are troubled with Quartains the powder of it dried with a third part of Manna Frankincense in white wine men drink seven dayes against the Falling-sicknesse the Lungs helps sore eyes the Liver with sowr wine the Collick the Gall in sugar pearls and dimnesse of the eyes the curd of one that hath eaten nothing but milk dried in the Sun or smoke is sovereign against bloody-fluxes It draws out a thorn mixt with flower of Frankincense and Oke-gum Some use it against the sting of Serpents and to help conception But it is said to kill what is conceived if drunk in the Reins boyled are ministred for the Stone stale and tied to the feet eases the Gout From the Mother some make medicines for the griefs of the bladder the Flesh fried in oyl is ministred
day the Mice have in one day prevented them and devoured all in one night at Calenum we have seene it done saith Niphus In Cantabria men are hired to hunt them The Aeolians and Trajans were so vexed with them that they sacrificed them to Smynthian Apollo They entrap them and knock them on the head with a Spade when they are hurt they betake them to succoury that is their nature Not to speak now of the Rats with tails tufted at the end and have a peculiar cry nor of the leem that falls from the clouds in hasty rain and lives till it taste new grasse nor of the Napel-Mouse There is the Filbert mouse of which kind there is a greater and a lesser Gesner kept a great one some dayes alive it was like a Rat and Mouse-coloured on the back the sides yellow and especially the head the ears great and smooth the belly white feet reddish the tail hairy eyes broad black goggle the beard white and black smelling like the house-mouse The lesse is reddish some but few have a sweet sent called by the Italians Muschardines by some Lucioli from their bright glistring eyes it is very like a Spider-mouse He nestles among the bows of the Filbert-tree or the Flax and also under ground and eats Nuts Some of them sleep from harvest to spring some say without waking but those that have kept them say they wake sometimes There also a Spider-mouse that is so nimble and light it can walke on thred and not bent it or on a sword edge without taking harme Others say it is venomous and hath the name from a fish called Aranaeus or a Spider it is much lesse then a Weesel inclining to ash-colour teeth small the tail short and slender the muzzle long and sharp The eyes so small for such a body that Pliny thought it pureblind and others call it the blind mouse It is dusk and yellow the belly white Swine-snowted thick of hair the tail twice as little as of other mice In either jaw are two foreteeth sticking oâ—t Between the cheek teeth is no hollow place but they are all as one bone in one part are three knags so small that you cannot see them there are four other cheek teeth unequall and knaged in all twenty teeth They are not beyond the Appenine hill but everywhere in Italy especially about Trent also in Germany They winter in stables in summer they haunt gardens and Cow-dunghills feeding on roots especiall eatable thistles to the Husbandmans great damage also on carrion Those by Trent are not venomous They hate the track of wheels Their squeake is shriller then of other mice but by reason of its dimme sight it is sluggish Their bite is venemous for a Cat will catch but not eat them Their bite is worse that are great with young to any other creature that is so The Alpine Mouse lives in the Alps is called also Marmota and beare mouse it being shaped like both Albert refers the Empetra to these a beast now unknown headed like a Hare as big as a Cony the ears so small scarce seen above the hair like a badger long and party-coloured haired short-tayled sharp nayled and dig deep In winter it grows monstrous fat The foreteeth like the Hares and if cut off will grow again in one night Their stones ly high The blind gut is large like a stomack rough within and net-like there in a large womb The liver hath seven lappets distinct the greatest towards the left side The gall-bag is the fold to the duodenum the spleen long like a large Swallows The water-vessels or Uriteres not comming strait down from the reines but cleaving to the back and small Most of them about Trent and in the snowy cold parts of Germany They feed on fruit especially milke that they suck as pigs therefore haunt they sheep-coats Being tamed they eat pulse bread fish c. About Christmasse dig you find them asleep in the ground nothing wakes them but the heat of the sun or fire A little thing frights them vex them they squeak like a pipe or against change of weather They stink so that in summer they are not to be endured nor want they wit Toward winter they convey hay and chaff into their holes They lay one flat and load him with hay and drag him by the tale into their hole which hath two entrances through the one they all passe too and fro out of the other they carry their dung When winter begins they stop up the doore and in the depth of winter they stop up the other so fast that a spade cannot pearce it About the end of September they meet seven or more in one hole commonly the number is odd and there on straw they ly snorting till spring One still stands centinell while the rest go abroad if he spy any thing he squeaks aloud and warns the rest whereupon they all come running and he enters last In fair weather they play together and murmur and bark like little dogs When tame they will looke your head like an Ape About approach of winter they come and eat with those who live on the Alps. They rost and boyl them in black pottage and sprinkle them with salt and hang them in the smoake and give them to women in child-bed The fat softens shriveled sinews and smeared on the navell provokes sleep The stomack eases the collick Aristotle in his book of wonders mentions the water-Mouse He hath three passages one for his filth one for his water one for bearing young Near the bignes of the Mole of a dusk-colour all but the belly which is bright ash-colour it is thick and soft-haired the head small for such a body the upper-part of the musle hangs over in each jaw two teeth in the lower lesser and blunt Their eyes are hardly seene the sides of the mouth are of a long ash-coloured shagge the tayl thin of hair and a bony sinew in the midst the hinder-legs are longest and flat and skind as a Ducks They are common in Strymon and Nile they go abroad in faire nights There are of them in smaller rivers and in Lusae an Arcadian-Spring They feed on water-plants fruit and fish The Magi that followed Zoroastres thought these Mice divells or Tortoyses In some parts of France they eate them There is also the Coyopillis it uses the tayl for hands the young when frighted embraces the dame It resembles the Tlacuatzis in tayl eares and mussles The tayl is thicker and stronger then the Mouses the belly palish white the ears so thin you may see through them the feet and thighs white They are found in the Tepoplan-hills The Crocodile also uses the tail as hands therewith catching beasts and men as a prey CHAPTER XVIII Of the Mole THe
forefeet and a spur the yard long and stretched out His chief strength lies in the tail-bone a pill whereof made of the dust as bigge as a birds-head and put into the eare asswages eare-paine and takes away tingling and thicknes of hearing as it is said but it is knowen to give certain ease I adde the craft of the Chirquinchus they that have seene it and report that when it raines he lies on his back gathers water on his soft belly that lies between the plates and remaines so while the shewre lasts though it rain the whole day till some Deere thirsty comes unawares to drink then he closes his plates and snaps the Deers slips and nose and let not go the hold till he stifle him And as the Hedge-hogge also he craftily rouls up himself round like a ball and nothing but fire can loosen him The Indians abuse the shells to their witchcrafts especially to discover and punish theeves first touching the ground therewith that the suspected person had toucht or any thing else they fill his mouth with the drinke Chicha then beat they drums the shells the while skip and daunce Hereby is the theeves face marked with a whelk that runs along his cheeks through either jaw if the charm hold ARTICLE III. Of tame foure-footed Beasts CHAPTER I. Of the Dog SO much for the half wilde Beasts the tame follow namely the Dog and the Cat. Varro fetches the Dogs name Canis from Canorus shrils in his barke The Greekes of old called him Kuoon from Kuoo doubtles to love or lust Of late Ekilos from his masterfulnes Ulaktoor from barking and Akanthis from fawning with his tayl not to insist on the description of so knowen a beast In dissection it is noted that the belly within forked the neck in shortnes and narrownes answering the middle-finger the corners are an handbreath a palme long of like thicknes not wreathed like a Swines the forkends reach to the reins tied by veins that come as far as the womb the testicles resting thereon by a thin skin At the first opening of the neck the body shews it self in bulk shape and colour like a Snails-head thrust forth out of the shell you cannot thrust a bodkin in till you cut it up a litle Dissect a bitch you find the puppies wrapt up in three beds called chorion allantoides and amnion the former can scarce be parted they are so thin In the right corner ly usually five whelps in the left foure each hath its bed the chorion in the midst girdles ly thwart two fingers broad streaked with black from the end and red in the middle each as blood-spotted The kell like a bag covering the upper-guts the top sprouting out of the stomack-bottome compassing the whole the hinder-part is set into the Spleen and the sweetbreads which latter shew themselves presently at the rise of the duodenum being fastned thereto and to the porturine which sends a trebble-branch to the neighbouring-parts Meseraick Spleen-guts the Paunch-branch runs beyond part of the stomack the Spleen-branch runs up strait to the mouth of the stomack The Spleen is tied to the mid-rif by a film two fingers broad and to the stomack by the kall the Spleen is like a foot with a wide shoo on Colon-gut it hath none the blind-gut receives the end of the strait one which unfolded is as long as your middle-finger At the end of the streight-gut within is one faire lappet and another lesse in the beginning of the blind-gut The streight-gut is much rumpled There is a fold of arteries from the aorta wound to the hollow of the liver approaching the pancreas pluck one you draw the other and the upper-bowells Above the upper-mouth of the stomack are two kernels both Spungy-moist the right harder and greater then the left Dogs-blood is black as burnt At the tip of the Tongue is set in a round muscle descending in a middle-line The right lappet of the heart is twice as big as the left On the parts of the pan that the temple-muscles cover appears no thin skin to enwrap them besides what is proper to the muscles but on the other parts of the brain-pan there is At the tongue-root is a small kernell on either side drawne out sideling The ringlets of the sharp artery lie thwart but not awry as in the Swine The brain is greater then a Swines Turn the brain up and certain mamillary-passages shew themselves and the beginning of the back-bone if you cut deep there you shall spy two small passages one comming from the paps in a strait line reaching to the end of the inner-brain the other a litle on this side lying upward thwart of that On the fore-feet are five toes on the hinder foure The Bitches-belly hath two rows of paps on either side Albert saith that the nostrils of a Dog of a good breed are at the ends round firme and blunt The temple muscles are noted to be very strong as in the Wolf and the Lion which inables his jaws to break bones There were no Dogs in Brasil till Vilagagnon's voyage If any come by hap into the Arabian Island Sigaron they wander and die They eat any thing even fish and carrion Onely they refrain dogs-flesh and what is thunder-strooke They eat grasse also and it is their Physick From Ash-apples they abstain because the turning-joints of their hips are thereby pained Drinking wine or strong water makes them run wild till the vapour be spent They are ever given to gendring seldomest in Autumne They hold on so till twelf years old sometimes give over at nine If they begin at foure the breed is better if at a year old not They are foureteen dayes hote and the Bitch six months after puppying go to Dog again They couple also promiscuously with other beasts as with Wolves by Cyrene whence spring Crocutae with Lions whence Leontomiges come with Beavers whence Castorides with Foxes whence Fox-dogs They carry their puppies sixty dayes some three-and-sixty They bring a litter of twelf sometimes sixteen A Hare-hound in Bononia puppied seventeen at once Albertus saw Mastives that brought in the first litter nineteen at another eighteen at a third thirteen Those that women dandle puppy one at once First they breed males next females then males again if they couple in due time The first resembles the sire the rest are as it happens They are all puppied-blind and the more they suck the longer they remain so yet none longer then one-and-twenty dayes nor do any see till seven dayes old some say if but one be puppied at nine dayes old he sees if two the tenth day and so on but it is not certain They have milke commonly five dayes ere they litter some sooner Their milke is thicker then other beasts except the Sows and Hares They seldome live above fourteene yeares some have lasted two-and-twenty The Dogs of Laconia ten
live young breake the back hath ugly bumps on it it is ash-colour or dun That Gesner dissected was seven fingers long black with white spots on the belly the rest spotted with black and rugged There is another sort with bright half circles on the back and there is of those the greater and the lesser Salamander The last is that of Matheolus common among the Utinenses the head rounder and shorter The Land-ones tayled like the eel black-backed with murry-spots they love dark ditches and fat soils and ponds with white mud there they cleave under stones and seldome swim above Gesner cast one into a tub of water and it put forth the mouth They are slow on ground and hold their mouths close shut you must force them open Cast them into salt they wagge the tayl and dy Beat them long they live The skinne so hard a sword cannot pierce it Out of the wounds comes milky matter Provoke them they swell and start upright and pour out poysonous sweat and look wistly on the provoker If a Sow eat one shee dies CHAPTER IV. Of the Stellio THis goes for a Lizard called Stellio from his starry marks and in Greeke Askalalotaes or Koolobataes from the soft and silent gate and creeping through walls and Galeotes because Weesellike it is ever climbing softly there are divers kinds of them That of the Greeks called Colotes and Ascalabotes it is full of spots and hath a harsh voyce and feeds on every thing That of Italy resembling Chamaeleon living on dew and Spiders and is said to be venomous as the other harmles Hether referre the little white beasts like small Lizards of a bright and brittle-body about Rome called Tarantulaes but the small Lizard is silver-coloured called Liakoni In Gazara was seen a black Stellio as big as a Weesel great-headed and big-bellied We give below a Print of the Matâ—â—â—oli and Facetan Lizard There are none in Germany France nor England but in Thrace Sicily and Syria and those more deadly then they of Italy They keep in chinks of doors and windows and chimnyes That that is foe to the Scorpion is not in Italy bred There are venomous ones In winter they ly hid and eat not Like snakes they grow young again they help the falling-sicknesse they ly in wait for Spiders and Bees and hunt them and Scorpions they seldome bite having bent teeth which they leave in a wound their bite benums but seldome kills The flesh plucks splinters out mans body it cures its own bite and putrified in oyl cures the Scorpions bite In Quartans some layd it in a box under the patients head to prevent the fit The ashes held in the left hand provoke in the right subdue Iust. The parts make sleepy and benum the liver-pounct eases tooth-ach sprinkled on The dung takes away warts the older the better against epilepsy drowned in wine the wine drunke breeds spots or freckles on the face the gall dissolved in water gathers Weesels CHAPTER V. Of the Scincus or Land-Crocodile THe Scincus so called perhaps from Tinsa in the Arabique is also called the land or lesser Crocodile either for being like or for dreading Saffran It â—s of the bignes of a green Lizard or the Salamander fourefooted a thumb thick and not above a quarter long the tayl round and scaly the scales small on the body many and clayish coloured the head long little thicker then the neck the belly as it were winged the tayl round as of the Lizard but shorter and crooked at the end a streak from head to tayl Gesner saw one with five toes and nails a thumb and half broad two palms long and another six palms long at Constantinople The are bred onely in Arabia about Mecha and are brought thence to Alexandria and Venice They live on sweet flowers therefore no wonder their dung sents so on dry ground they lay egges and bury them The flesh is a great antidote Rhasis uses to hang the young on those that are frighted in their sleep Pulverid it makes lustfull the same flesh helps the falling sicknes in India and makes fat The heart in black Sheep-wool of a Lamb first yeaned being worn is thought to chase away quartan-agues The gall with hony is cried up against bloodshot-eyes the reins increase seed the blood with borax smeard on the face removes freckles the fat helps reinpain the ashes of the skin some sprinkle on parts to be cut off to make them lesse sensible Aegineta of the tayl make his oyntment Entaticon out of the bowells is a perfume made against stopping of the matrix the dung is antiepileptick and clears the eyes the best is the white and mouldring that soon melts in water whores use it to keep their faces sleek and unwrinkled as you bruise it it smells like old leven Of old it was sophisticated with dung of stares fed with rice The Indian and Arabian are the biggest In India is bred a beast like it as great as a Malta Dog with a rough scaly skin called by the Indians Phatagen happily it is the Candiverbera or smitetayl In Cyprus is a Lizard everyway resembling the Scincus In the Lake of Vicenza is a divers sort a kind of Salamander The Scincus Rhasis hath a tayl not round but flat or squat about the sides CHAPTER VI. Of the Foure-footed Cordylus and other Lyzards IT is like the fish Cordylus called by some Latermen the land-Crocodile and the Candiverbera because it is ever whisking and clapping with the tayl which is like a knotted club and beats all that come near him Some say he hath gils but there hangs one in a publique library with onely two holes by the corners of the mouth It is like a Crocodile but lesse and moves the under-jaw headed and mouthed like a Tortoyse the neck short and swelling below each foot hath five toes the body scaly skin hard like a snakes slough tayl round with scaly ringlets inexpressible the scales are hard as bones and fouresquare hollowed a litle to make the tayl round joyned like tiles the corners sharp as thorns they are transparant and of a pale yellow as horn the belly struts out more then a Crocodiles the back broad and flat This may proove Aelians Indian Phattages by the description whose rough skin they use to cut with CHAPTER VII Of the Chamaeleon TE name imports a little Lion the notation from a Camel and a Lion is ridiculous of late the wild call it Gamaleon Zamaleon Hamaleon and Maleon It resembles a Lizard only the thighs stand uprighter and higher the sides are joyned to the belly as a fish and the back-bone such snouted like a hog the tail long and pointed with rounds viperlike it is crooked clawed it is rough-bodied as the Crocodile the eyes hollow and sunk great and coloured as the body the flesh is but little about the head jaws and dock
elsewhere none it hath blood only in the heart and about the eyes the bowells are without spleen The lungs take up almost the whole body Thus Arist. and Pliny Others write that from the midst of the head backward there sticks out a three cornered part bony and the rest afore is hollow as a pipe the brims on both sides sticking out bony and sharp as a saw-teeth It moves not the ey-balls it is ever gaping hath a long tongue like that of an earth-worm at the tip is a spungy glewly knot wherewith it preys In stead of teeth and gums it hath one continued bone knaged the upper-lip is shortest the throat and artery like the Lizards the heart as big as a house-mouses the liver hath two lappets the left greatest the gall-bag as big as a barly corn cleaving to the left liver-lappet bowelled as a Lizard the forefeet very different from the hinder the forefeet having three toes inward two outward the hinder three outward and two inward It is from the snowt to the dock seven or eight fingers long five fingers high it hath about sixteen ribs bending between the bottome of the belly and the ridge of the back and it is spotted like a Leopard the teeth stand comlily he hath but one gut with bendings the excrement moyst unlesse near the fundament the liver parted on the bunchy side pouring the blood into the hart that hath ears and not veins the lungs being puffed passes into a thin skin reaching round almost through the whole body there is no rim at the belly bottome onely a thin skin severing the right from the left parts He hath no milt no bladder no reins to be seene but small bits of flesh that it may be are genitals the tongue is near a foot long They are in Asia Africk India and Madagascar They sit on the garden hedges at grand Cair by the banks of Nile as also on bramble-bushes Of old they were thought to live on air but they prey on flies locusts but they fancy most the worms in meal tubs They keep above for fear of serpents and vipers They use their tongue as a trunk darting it forth with that nimblenesse that you can hardly perceive it by the means of a small forke bone planted on either side the ends of the jaws the tongue is hollow like a gut which he can infold and unfold at pleasure at the end is a slimy bit of flesh to prey withall Peirescius kept eight of them to observe their breeding there were in one female within a thin skin above a hundred egges some as big as an olive kernell all yolk no white seen in them yet resembling milk They hold enmity with the hauk which will dy it is thought if he but tast a Chamaeleon and a crew also unlesse bay-leave fence him The Elephant is fabled by Solinus to swallow them they being of the colour of the leaves and they cost him his life unlesse he help himself by wild olive Fear of vipers and serpents makes him live on shrubs and trees His spittle let down on a serpents head like a limed thread kills him Wild figs make him wild who is otherwise harmlesse He turns his whole dy about sits high ever gaping when dead hee is pale In winter he hides himself as Lizards use By nature he admirably changes colour but in eyes and tail and whole body according to the colour of what lies next except red and white yet Ambrosine affirms from a Gentlemans testimony that he changes to white But Peirescius his eight changed not colour Whether they be green or ash they put on a black if you turn them to the sun or fire It is strange that their eyes being combined move not but one looking any way the other is fixed or bends the other way which deflection comes from the four pullies in them there being no distinction of Iris but only a ball wherein the horny part ends which is glistring and various as the rest of the body Those of Cochin eat them They bind many together and sell them being bought they are cast into the fire and roasted Flea one the flesh is very clear which they seeth in a liquour like our butter Sod away with oyl in a new earthen pot it drives away an Epilepsy It makes a rare oyntment for the gout see the composition in Trallianus The tongue hanged on helps memory and women in child-birth the gall stops fluxes The hart wrapt in black-wool first shorn helps a quartan ague to omit fables about raising storms making mute c. with the heart tongue c. you must know it is Pliny who though learned and usefull studied too much to delight men In Egypt they are pale In Arabia much smaller and of another colour as bright yellowish and red-spotted Wee have given here the shapes of the pale and black Chamaeleons CHAPTER VIII Of the Crocodile HE is a kind of Lizard so called from dreading the shores The Aegyptians terme him Chempsa the Turks thence Kimsak Kircher Picharouki Statius the Pharian wild-beast others Tenchea In Arsinoë Suchus in India Cayman It resembles a Lizard it is of a Saffran colour but white-bellied and there soft-skined elsewhere musket proofe Some have been seen six and twenty cubites long By Panama there are some of above a hundred foot The head is broad the snowt as a swines the gape reaches to the ears the eyes sharp and piercing and like a hogs he hath a rew of great bright strong teeth like a comb about sixty in all more in the upper jaw and sticking out seen when the mouth is shut The tongue cleaves and is uselesse The under jaw he stirs not the testicles cling to the inner-loyns The back-bone is made up of sixty turning joynts tied by as many sinews the claws are very sharp bending somewhat toward the sides the tail is of the length of the rest of the body wherein is a finne of seven fingers to the end M. Scaurus was first who in his Edil-ship shewed five in his plays in an Euripus made for the time They are found in Africa Asia and America especially in Nilus and neighbouring pools in Niger in Ganges about Bengala in the river Bambotus near Atlas and not far from Chalcedon but small ones They love warm waters In Peru are none till you come to Pacra then they are frequent Some live in miry plashes on fish but are most greedy after mans flesh They prey also on beasts on land There was one taken that had swallowed three young ones About Arsinoë they were held holy and nourished of old by the Priests with bread flesh and wine Some gave them dainties rost-meat and mingled drinks The Shee lays sixty egges as big as Goose-egges and by a kind of divination where the Nile when it swells comes not Shee lays and hatches sixty in sixty daies Gyllius