ANIMAL LORE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18943, 14 February 1925, Page 1 (Supplement)

ANIMAL LORE.

A MEDIEVAL TEXT-BOOK.

BY KOTARK.

Medieval biological handbooks kept, alive the taste for fiction and the practice of imaginative writing. Modern science, by its magnificent daring hypothesis has much iu common with tho highest range of poetry; the greatest scientist is not the most.- accurate collator of facts, but tho man who adds to tho breadth and depth of his knowledge the vision of the s.eei. But his medieval counterpart soared at his own sweet will without reference to actual experience or observation. Once get him off the ground and heaven only knew where he would land. The textbook of science had to be interesting at all costs, and tho unknown stretched its fascinating spaces so widely in every dii.eetion round the insignificant island of actual knowledge that the wildest flight of imagination was bound to pass unchallenged. It was an age when men absorbed greedily whatever was presented to them, on no better ground than that it was impossible. So we have the dragon and the dragonkilling that no self-respecting hero could omit from his repertoire. Combine the eccentricities of two eccentric animals and you have something worth talking about. The elephant is wonder enough to the modern mind ; tho giraffe, too, can claim physical qualifies that lift it- out of the ruck of ordinary four-footed creatines. But put an elephant's head 011 a giraffe s neck and you leave nature hopelessly panting in the rear. And if you find that your efforts to evolve a new biological wonder fall short of the standard set by other more imaginative workers iu the same field, you can always deck the animals you do know with new gifts and graces. That seems to have been tho scientific method of the period. Old wives' tales were the medieval substitute for modern research. And if the final result lacked something in accuracy according to present day ideas. it left the moderns far behind in picturesqueness and in interest. Bartholomew the Englishman. One of the chief knowledge-books of the Middle Ages was the "Properties of Things," of Bartholomew Anglicus. It was a best-seller of its day, and its popularity, as William Morris says, "shows how much the science of the day was appreciated by the public at large, and how many there were who wished to learn." If the young people of the 13th and 14th centuries could not take a tram to the 7,00, they could delve into Bartholomew's pages and find there a satisfaction that even the zoo cannot, give to the blase boys and girls of to-day. I have been browsing in Bartholomew to my great content, and have found much that is rich and strange. I learn, for example, that the eagle takes her young in her claws and forces them to look at the sun. "And if any eye of any of her birds watereth, she slayeth him, or else driveth him out of the nest and despiseth him. So nature eliminates the unfit. Apparently the antipathies between natural enemies did not depart with death ; and this singular persistence of incompatibility added to the troubles of the musicmakers of the time. For thus saith Bartholomew; "Strings made of wolf-gut done and put into a lute or in an harp do destroy and fret and corrupt the strings made of sheep-gut, if it so be that they be set among them." Bartholomew deals lovingly with the birds. He notes unexpectedly that, "the raven hath four and sixty changings of voice." If that is so there never was a. i songster with so varied an assortment of ' gifts who made less use of them. Tho swan's long neck makes him tho sweetest of singers, and its undulations enable, him | to produce an infinite variety of sound. ! The swan has always been reputed a songbird, though one part of the legend makes his vocal achievements the certain prelude to his death. But I have never heard any but, the harshest of sounds from the most graceful swan. It must have been argued that nature would never give a bird a neck so adapted, for sweet harmonies without ensuring that somewhere, and sometime, the mechanism would be used with the noblest effects. And in medieval times what ought to be was soon affirmed to be. The pelican is so different in appearance, from the usual run of birds that she is bound to behave herself in a correspondingly erratic manner. It, seems that the pelican "loveth too much her children." When the young birds begin to feel their strength, they rise up against their parents, smite the father and mother in the face, and generally behave like spoiled children. The mother's patience is at last exhausted. She rises up in her wrath and " smitet-h them again and slayeth them." But after three days of bitter repentence for her luckless haste and fury, " the mother smifoth herself in her side that the blood runneth out, and shoddeth that hot blood on tho bodies of her children. And by virtue of that blood, the birds that were before dead quicken again." So all's well that ends well. Monsters of the Deep. We have not achieved an aquarium so far; but perhaps Bartholomew's researches into the habits of what the old poets called tho " finny tribe," may make up in picturesqueness what they lack in local application. The dolphin shows remarkable intelligence. When it finds the body of a man, it knows at. once whether he has ever eaten dolphin flesh. If the man's fish diet has included dolphin, the dolphin's flesh dic« immediately includes man. But if the noble fish perceives that, the man has never eaten of its brethren it drives away all other fish, and, with infinite pains, brings the body safe ashore. I have never heard of anyone willingly partaking of dolphin flesh, but, if such there be, they know what to expect. But, the dolphin is hardly worth mentioning alongside the cnchirius. He is six inches long at most. " But though he be full little of body, nathless, he is most of virtue. For he cleavoth to the ship and holdeth it stedfastly in the sea, as though the ship were on ground therein. I hough winds blow, and waves arise strongly, and wood (mad) storms, that ship may not move. And that fish holdeth not still tho ship by no craft, but only cleaving to the ship." After that one learns without emotion that the whale, when it grows old, collects in the wrinkles on its aged back considerable deposits, wind-blown, one presumes, of rich garden soil. " Herbs and | small trees and bushes grow thereon," and | sailors mistake it for an island. Sinbad the Sailor would be no figure of highly : coloured romance to the age that took its natural history from Bartholomew. The Oyster. We come nearer home. The great enemy of the oyster is not the poaching picnicker. The enib, we read, lies in wait till the unsuspecting oyster opens its shell to the breezes of heaven. There he lies enjoying himself at his leisure, like a good householder in his garden at close of day. The crab steals silently upon him, bearing in its claws a small'pebble. Dexterously it pushes the stone over the lower-shell of the oyster. When the oyster wearies of the view and turns to settle down for the night, he finds his shell will not close. 'There is a breach in his walls, and nothing be can do will repair it. The villain of the piece enjoys his ovster-supper, and nature has staged another of her inmimerI able tragedies. They had an appetite for I wonders, these readers of Bartholomew, tho Englishman; alas, that so much of the wonder lias vanished from the world!