Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/315

Rh regard her, as well by the sweet scent of her flesh as also by a special and peculiar ornament and beauty of her body, shewing herself fresh and cheerful, full of dew and verdure of green herbs, pure and neat, I warrant you; in this manner doth she present herself unto the male and courteth him: now when she perceives once that she is sped and hath conceived by him, she leaveth him and retireth apart in good sort full decently; and then her whole care is to provide for that which she goeth withal, forecasting how to be delivered of it in due time, and bethinking how to save, preserve and rear it when it is fallen and brought forth. And certes, it is not possible to express sufficiently and worthily the particulars that are done by these dumb creatures (but only this, that everything proceedeth from the tender love and affection which they have to their young ones) in providence, in patience, in abstinence.

We all acknowledge the bee to be wise, we call her so, we celebrate her name for producing and working so diligently that yellow honey, yea, and we flatter in praising her, feeling as we do the sweetness of the said honey, how it tickleth and contenteth our tongue and taste; and all this while what one is there of us that maketh any account of the wisdom, wit, and artificial subtlety that other creatures shew, as well in the bringing forth their young as the fostering and nouriture of them? for first and foremost do but consider the sea-bird called alcyon, no sooner doth she perceive herself to be knit with egg but she falleth presently to build her nest, she gathereth together the chine-bones of a certain sea-fish which the Greeks all βελόνη, that is to say, the sea-needle; these she coucheth, plaiteth, windeth and interlaceth one within another, so artificially working the same and weaving them close together n a round and large form, after the manner of a fisher's leap or veel net; and when she hath knit and fortified the same exactly with many courses of the said bones driven and united jointly together in good order, she exposeth it full against inundation and dashing of the sea waves, to the end that the superficial outside of the work, beaten upon gently and by little and little with. the water, being thickened and felted thereby, might be more solid and firm, and so it proveth indeed; for so hard it groweth by this means that scarcely any stone can crush it, or edged instrument of iron cleave it; but that which is yet more wonderful, the mouth and entry of the said nest is composed and wrought proportionably just to the measure and bigness of the bird alcyon aforesaid, so as no creature bigger or less than