Page:The whole familiar colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.djvu/395

CONCERNING FRIENDSHIP. 391 the cymindis, or night-hawk. And also an elephant hates a mouse, a troublesome creature to mankind, and will not touch a bit of provender that it sees a mouse in, nor is there any manifest cause why it hates him so. It is with good reason it hates the horse-leech, because if it happens to sup it up in its drink it torments him miserably. There is scarce any animal that is more friendly to man than a dog is, nor a greater enemy to him than a wolf, so that a man loses his speech if he sees him, and between these two there is the utmost dis- cord ; as a wolf is the most bitter enemy to sheep, which have their dependence merely upon the providence of mankind, whose care it is to defend this harmless creature made for the nourishment of man. They are all in arms against the wolf, as against the common enemy of man- kind, especially the whole army of dogs ; so that it is grown into a proverb, " I will give you no more quarter than a dog does to a wolf." The sea-hare is an incui-able poison to mankind, if anybody taste it unawares ; again, on the other hand, the touch of a man is death to that hai-e. A panther is a very fierce beast towards a man, and yet is so afraid of a hyaena that it does not dare to engage him ; and hence they say, that if anybody carry a piece of hyeena skin about him, a panther will not set upon him, there is such a sagacity in their natural sense ; and they add also, that if you hang their two skins one over against the other, the panther hair will fall off.

A spider is an animal that is one of a man's own family, but is very destructive to a serpent; so that if he happen to see a serpent sunning himself under a tree, it will spin down and fix his sting so sharply in his forehead that the serpent will roll himself up, and die at last. I have heard it told by those that have seen it, that there is the like enmity between a toad and a spider ; but that the toad cures himself when he is wounded by biting of a plantain leaf. I will tell you an English story : I suppose you know it is the custom there to strew the floor with green rushes; a certain monk had carried some bundles of these rushes into his chamber, to strew them at his leisure, and happening to take a nap after dinner a great toad creeps out and gets upon his mouth while he lay asleep, fixing his feet, two upon his upper and two upon his under lip. To draw off the toad was certain death, to let him be there was worse than death itself. Some persuaded that the monk should be carried and laid upon his back in the window where a great spider had his web. It was done: the spider presently seeing her enemy, spins down, darts her sting into the toad, and runs up again to her web; the toad swelled, but was not got off. The spider spins down a second time and gives him another wound; it swells more, but still is alive. The spider repeats it a third time, then, the toad takes off his feet and drops off dead. This piece of service the spider did her landlord. Jo. You tell me a wonderful strange story.

Ep. I will tell you now not what I have heard, but what I have seen with my own eyes. An ape has an unmeasiirable aversion to a tortoise; a certain person gave me a specimen of this when I was at Rome. He set a tortoise upon the head of his servant, and put his hat upon it, and then brought him to the monkey; the ape presently, with much alacrity, leaps upon the lad's shoulders to catch lice in his head, and taking off his hat spies the tortoise. It was amazing to see with