Page:Curious myths of the Middle Ages (1876).djvu/407

 that she could not get to her young, flew away in quest of a plant, which she brought, and applied to the plaster, which at once gave way, and admitted her to her young. Then she went forth to seek food, and the man again stopped up the hole, but once more the hoopoe removed the obstacle by the same means. And this took place a third time again. What Ælian relates of the hoopoe, Pliny tells of the woodpecker. This bird, he says, brings up its young in holes; and if the entrance to them be plugged up never so tight, the bird is able to make the plug burst out.

In the English Gesta Romanorum is the following story. There lived in Rome a noble emperor, Diocletian by name, who loved the virtue of compassion above every thing. Therefore he desired to know which of all the birds was most kindly affectioned towards its young. One day, the Emperor was wandering in the forest, when he lit upon the nest of a great bird called ostrich, in which was the mother with her young. The king took the nest along with the poults to his palace, and put it into a glass vessel. This the mother-bird saw, and, unable to reach her little ones, she