Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 6 (1902).djvu/339

Rh the grass or furze on the roadside. One large specimen, fully twenty inches in length, showed fight, and I gave it severe blows on the head and back. It stretched out, apparently stiffened and "dead." But it was not dead, for in a few minutes it recovered, and tried to escape, when another blow or two finished it off. I am inclined to think that the "stiffening" was due to muscular action produced by the stunning, not killing, blows.

These are scattered profusely throughout all his works, and are invariably free from myth or poetic fable, so beautifully employed by Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other great writers of the "Spacious Age of Great Gloriana of the West." Erasmus's references, in fact, are mainly those of a field-naturalist. No doubt, apart from his intuitive love of wild life, faunal and floral, his habits afforded him great scope for very varied observations. Erasmus was a great traveller, and he wandered leisurely on horseback in many lands near and far. In his day, too (1467?-1536), animal life (Feræ naturæ), even in this country, was exuberant, man's ingenious theories about "regulating the balance of nature" not having arisen, nor, indeed, for many years afterwards. Here are some of the bird references, taken almost "at random," from his great works, and even private letters to friends:—

"What place is for us where so many jackdaws cawing, and magpies chattering."

"Just like a bird in a cage; and yet, ask if it would be freed from it, I believe it will say, no. And what's the reason of that? Because it is bound by its own consent."

"Why, sir, are you not ashamed of it? No; no more than a Cuckoo is of his singing."

"Are you not ashamed, you sleepy sot, to lye-a-bed till this time of day? Good servants rise as soon as it is Day, and take care to get everything in order before their Master rises. How loth this drone is to leave his warm nest; he is a whole hour a scratching, and stretching, and yawning."

This passage stands in need of explanation. In Bailey's translation he, strange to say, uses the word "drone," whereas in the original colloquy it is "Cuckoo." The Rev. E. Johnson,