cealed, can yet give no account where the Phoenix and Bird of Paradise are bred. Some would have Arabia the Country of the Phoenix, yet are the Arabians without any knowledge of it, and leave the discovery to the work of Time. The Bird of Paradise is found dead, with her Bill fixed in the Ground, in an Island joyning to the Maluccos not far from Macaca; whence it comes thither, unknown, though great dilligence hath been imployed in the search, but without success. One of them dead came to my hands. I have seen many. The Tayle is worn by Children for a penashe, the Feathers fine and subtile as a very thin cloud. The Body, not fleshy, resembling that of a Thrush. The many and long Feathers (of a pale invivid colour, nearer white than ash colour), which cover it, make it of great beauty. Report says of these Birds that they alwaies fly, from their birth to their death, not discovered to have any feet. They live by flyes they catch in the ayre, where, their diet being slender, they take some little repose. They fly very high, and come falling down with their wings displayed. As to their generation, Nature is said to have made a hole in the back of the Male, where the Female laies her Eggs, hatcheth her young, and feeds them till they are able to fly : great trouble and affection of the Parent! I set down what I have heard. This is certainly the Bird so lively drawn in our Maps. The Pelican hath better credit. It is called by Quevedo the self-disciplining Bird, and hath been discovered in the land of Angola, where some were taken. I have seen two. Some will have a Scar in the Breast, from a wound of her own making there, to feed (as is reported) her young with her own bloud, an action which ordinarily suggests devout fancies."

The Brief Natural History by Eugenius Philalethes gives it as a vulgar error “that the PELICAN turneth her Beak against her Brest and therewith pierceth it till the blood gush out, wherewith she nourisheth her young: whereas a Pelican hath a Beak broad and flat, much like the slice of Apothecaries and Chirurgions, wherewith they spread their Plaisters, no way fit to pierce, as Laurentius Gubertus, Counsellor and Physitian to Henry the fourth of France, in his Book of Popular Errors hath observed.”

THE REMORA; OF WHICH THE STORY IS THAT IT STAYS SHIPS

UNDER SAIL.

Sir Thomas Browne doubts whether the story of the Remora be not unreasonably amplified. Ross, however, in his refutation of the Doctor's Vulgar Errors, cites Scaliger in behalf of the proposition that this is as possible as for the loadstone to draw iron; neither the resting of the one, nor the moving of the other, proceeding from an apparent, but an occult virtue; for even as in the one there is an occult principle of motion, so there is in the other a secret principle of quiescence.

THE CHAMELEON.

That the chameleon does live on air alone is maintained by Ross against Sir Thomas Browne; who opposes the tradition on these grounds

"1. The testimonies both of antient and modern writers, except a few, and the witnesses of some yet living, who have kept Chameleons a long time, and never saw them feed but on Air. 2. To what end hath Nature given it such large Lungs beyond its proportion? Sure not for refrigeration; lesse Lungs would serve for this use, seeing their heat is weak; it must be then for nutrition. 3. There is so little Blood in it that we may easily see it doth not feed on solid meat. 4. To what end should it continually gape more than other Animals but that it stands more in need of Air than they, for nutrition as well as generation? 5. He that kept the Chameleon, which I saw, never perceived it to void excrements backwards: an argument, it had no solid Food."

THE BEAVER.

The Brief Natural History by Eugenius Philalethes (1669) supplies the annexed information

"The Bever, being hunted and in danger to be taken, biteth off his Stones, knowing that for them his Life only is sought, and so often escapeth: hence some have derived his name, Castor, a castrando seipsum; and upon this supposition, the Egyptians in their Hierogliphicks, when they will signifie a Man that hurteth himself, they picture a Bever biting off his own Stones, though Alciat in his Emblems turnes it to a contrary purpose, teaching us by that example to give away our purse to Theeves, rather than our Lives, and by our wealth to redeem our danger. But this relation touching the Bever is undoubtedly false, as both by sense and experience and the testimony of Dioscorides (lib. iii. cap. 13) is manifested. First, because their Stones are very small, and so placed in their Bodies as are a Bore's; and therefore impossible for the Bever himself to touch or come by them: and secondly, they cleave so fast unto their back that they cannot be taken away, but the Beast must of necessity lose his Life; consequently most ridiculous is their Narration who likewise affirm that when he is hunted, having formerly bitten off his Stones, he standeth upright, and sheweth the Hunters that he hath none for them, and therefore his death cannot profit them, by means whereof they are averted and seek for another."

THE MOLE; AND THE ELEPHANT,

To the same authority we are indebted for the following: "That the Mole hath no Eyes, nor the Elephant Knees, are two well-known Vulgar Errors: both which, notwithstanding, by daily and manifest experience are found to be untrue."

OVUM ANGUINUM.

The Ovum Anguinum, or Druids' Egg, has already been noticed among the Physical Charms; but the reputed history of its formation we have reserved for insertion under the head of Vulgar Errors

"Near Aberfraw [in the Isle of Anglesey]," writes Gough in his edition (1789) of Camden, "are frequently found the Glain Naidr or Druid Glass Rings. Of these the vulgar Opinion in Cornwall and most parts of Wales is, that they are produced through all Cornwall by Snakes joining their heads together and hissing, which forms a kind of bubble like a ring about the head

of one of them, which the rest by continual hissing blow on, till it comes off at the Tail, when it immediately hardens and resembles a Glass Ring. Whoever found it was to prosper in all his undertakings. These Rings are called Glain Nadroedh, or Gemma Anguinæ; Glane in Irish signifies Glass. In Monmouthshire they are called Maen magl, and corruptly Glaim for Glain. They are small glass annulets, commonly about half as wide as our finger rings, but much thicker, usually of a green colour, though some are blue, and others curiously waved with blue, red, and white. Mr Lluyd had seen two or three earthen Rings of this kind, but glazed with blue, and adorned with transverse strokes or furrows on the outside. The smallest of them might be supposed to have been glass beads worn for ornaments by the Romans, because Some quantities of them, with several amber beads, had been lately discovered ina stone pit near Garford in Berkshire, where they also dig up Roman Coins, Skeletons, and pieces of Arms and Armour. But it may be objected that a battle being fought there between the Romans and Britons, as appears by the bones and arms, these glass beads might as probably belong to the latter. And, indeed, it seems very likely that these snake stones, as we call them, were used as charms or amulets among our Druids of Britain on the same Occasion as the Snake-eggs among the Gaulish Druids. Thus, continues Mr Lluyd, we find it very evident that the opinion of the vulgar concerning the generation of these Adder-beads, or Snake-stones, is no other than a relic of the Superstition or perhaps imposture of the Druids; but whether what we call Snake-Stones be the very same Amulets that the British Druids made use off, or whether this fabulous origin was ascribed formerly to the same thing, and in aftertimes applied to these glass beads, I shall not undertake to deternine. As for Pliny's Ovum Anguinum, it can be no other than a shell (marine or fossil) of the kind we call Echinus marinus, whereof one sort, though not he same he describes, is found at this day in most parts of Wales. Dr Borlase, who had penetrated more deeply into the Druidical Monuments in his Kingdom than any writer before or since, observes that, instead of the natural Anguinum which must have been very rare, artificial rings of stone, glass, and sometimes baked clay, were substituted as of equal validity."

The Doctor adds, from Mr Lhwyd's letter dated March 10, 1701, at the end of Rowland's Mona Antiqua, that "the Cornish retain a variety of Charms, and have still, towards the Land's End, the Amulets of Maen Magal and Glain-neider, which latter they call a Melprev (or Milprev, i.e., a thousand Worms), and have a Charm for the Snake to make it, when they have found one asleep, and stuck a hazel wand in the centre of her Spiræ."

The Cornish tradition, Borlase continues, is somewhat differently given us by Mr Carew: "The country-people have a persuasion that the Snakes here, breathing upon a hazel wand, produce a stone ring of blue colour, in which there appears the yellow figure of a snake, and that beasts bit and envenom'd being given some water to drink, wherein this stone has been infus'd, will perfectly recover of the poison."

These beads are not unfrequently found in barrows, and occasionally with skeletons, whose nation and age have not been ascertained. Bishop Gibson engraved three; one, of earth enamelled with blue, found near Dol Gelhe in Merionethshire; a second of green glass, found at Aberfraw; and a third, found near Maes y Pandy in Merionethshire.

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SALAMANDER.

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To un malli stawie giveu a There is a vulgar error, protests the author of the Brief N History, "that a Salamander lives in the Fire. Yet both Galen Dioscorides refute this Opinion; and Mathiolus in his Commenta upon Dioscorides, a very famous Physician, affirms of them that casting of many a Salamander into the Fire for tryal he found it fa The same experiment is likewise avouched by Joubertus." Andrews' Anecdotes Ancient and Modern, however, we rea "Should a Glass-house Fire be kept up, without extinction, for longer term than seven years, there is no doubt but that a Salama ski der would be generated in the Cinders. This very rational Idea nev much more generally credited than wise Men would readily believe

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MANNA.

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"There are many," writes Peacham in his Truth of our Tim, (1638), "that believe and affirm the Manna which is sold in t Shoppes of our Apothecaries to be of the same which fell from Heave and wherewith the Israelites were fedde;" and he proceeds to gi reasons why this cannot be. Sir Thomas Browne also has a referent exp to the subject.

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"That Fluctus decumanus, or the tenth wave, is greater or more dangerouf T than any other, some no doubt will be offended if we deny: and hereby wwe shall seem to contradict Antiquity: for, answerable unto the literal and commongil acceptation, the same is averred by many Writers, and plainly described bpect Ovid

Qui venit hic fluctus, fluctus supereminet omnes ;
Posterior nono est, undecimoque prior ;'

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which, notwithstanding, is evidently false; nor can it be made out by Observades tion either upon the shore or the Ocean, as we have with diligence explored in on both. And surely in vain we expect a regularity in the Waves of the Sea, oring in the particular motions thereof, as we may in its general Reciprocations, ere whose Causes are constant and Effects therefore correspondent. Whereas itsord fluctuations are but motions subservient: which Winds, Storms, Shores, Shelves, and every Interjacency irregulates. Of affinity hereto is that Conceit of Ovum decumanum, so called because the tenth Egg is bigger than any other, according to the reason alleged by Festus, 'Decumana Ova dicuntur, quia Ovum decimum majus nascitur.' For the honour we bear unto the Clergy we T cannot but wish this true: but herein will be found no more verity than the other." He adds: "The Conceit is numeral."

THE SWAN SINGING IMMEDIATELY BEFORE ITS DEATH. It is a popular tradition, says the author of the Brief Natural History, from which we have before quoted, that "swans a little before their

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sing most sweetly; of which, notwithstanding, Pliny thus speaks: m morte narratur flebilis cantus, falso ut arbitror aliquot experimenti; that is to say, swans are said to sing sweetly before their death, but falsely, as I take it, being led so to think by some experiments. Scaliger to the like purpose: De Cygni vero cantu suavissimo, quem cum Mendaciorum parente, Græcia, jactare ausus es, ad Luciani Tribunal, apud quem aliquid novi dicas, statuo te;' i.e., Touching the sweet singing of the Swan, which with Greece, the mother of Lies, you dare to publish, I cite you to Lucian's Tribunal, there to set abroach some new stuff. And Ælian: 'Cantandi studiosos esse jam communi Sermone pervulgatum est. Ego, vero, Cygnum munquam audivi canere, fortasse neque alius;' i.e., That Swans are skilful in singing is now rife in every man's mouth, but, for myself, I never heard them sing, and perchance no man else."

BASILISK, OR COCKATRICE.

The generation of a basilisk, we are instructed by Sir Thomas Browne, is supposed to proceed from a cock's egg hatched under a toad or a serpent; a conceit, as he observes, as monstrous as the brood itself. Of its power to destroy at a distance he supplies an explanation

"It killeth at a distance-it poisoneth by the Eye, and by priority of Vision. Now that deleterious it may be at some distance, and destructive without corporal contaction, what uncertainty soever there be in the effect, there is no high improbability in the relation. For if plagues or pestilential Atomes have been conveyed in the Air from different Regions; if Men at a distance have infected each other; if the Shadowes of some Trees be noxious; if Torpedoes deliver their Opium at a distance, and stupifie beyond themselves; we cannot reasonably deny that there may proceed from subtiller Seeds, more agile Emanations, which contemn those Laws, and invade at distance unexpected. Thus it is not impossible what is affirmed of this Animal; the visible Rayes of their Eyes carrying forth the subtilest portion of their poison, which, -eceived by the Eye of Man or Beast, infecteth first the Brain, and is from thence communicated unto the Heart." He adds: "Our Basilisk is generally described with Legs, Wings, a serpentine and winding Taile, and a Crist or Comb somewhat like a Cock. But the Basilisk of elder times was a proper ind of Serpent, not above three palmes long, as some account, and dif. erenced from other Serpents by advancing his head and some white marks or Coronary Spots upon the Crown, as all authentic Writers have delivered."

UNICORN.

The original word rem, translated unicorn in our version of the ook of Job (xxxix. 9), is by Jerome, or Hierom, Montanus and Aquila, ndered rhinoceros; in the Septuagint monoceros, which is nothing ɔre than "one horn." There can be no doubt but that the rhinoos is the real unicorn of antiquity. The fabulous animal of heraldry s nothing more than a horse with the horn of the pristis or sword-fish ck in his forehead.