Page:The whole familiar colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.djvu/396

S9 2 FAMILIAR COLLOQUIES. what horror he leaped away, how frightened he was, and with what tearfulness he looked back to see whether the tortoise followed him or not. There was likewise another specimen : the tortoise was tied to the monkey's chain that he could not avoid seeing him. It is incred- ible how much he was tormented; he was almost dead with fear : some- times turning his back, he would endeavour to beat off the tortoise with his hinder feet; at last, he pissed and shit towards him all that was in his belly, and with the fright fell into such a fever that we were forced to let him loose, and put him into a bath made of wine and water. Jo. There was no reason that the monkey should be afraid of the tortoise.

Ep. There may, perhaps, be something natural in it that we are not acquainted with. Why a linnet should hate an ass is easily accounted for; because he rubs himself against the thorns, and eats off the flowers of the hedge where she makes her nest; and she is so affrighted at the sight of an ass, that if she hear him bray, though it be a great way off, she throws down her eggs, and her young ones fall out of the nest for fear. But, however, she does not suffer him to pass, unrevenged. Jo. How can a linnet do any hurt to an ass 1 ? Ep. She pecks his foreback, that is galled with blows and burdens, and the soft part of his nose. We may also guess at the cause why there is a mutual grudge between the fox and the kite, because the ravenous fowl is always lying in wait to catch the fox's whelps; and very likely, on the other hand, that the fox does the same by her young ones, which is the cause of the dissension between the rat and the heron. And the same reason may be given for the enmity between the little bird called a merlin and the fox : the merlin breaks the crow's eggs ; the foxes persecute them, and they the foxes, pecking their whelps, which the crows seeing, join their assistance as against a common enemy.

But I cannot find out any reason why the swan and the eagle, the raven and the green-bird, the rook and the owl, the eagle and the wren should hate one another, unless it be that the latter hates the eagle because he is called the king of birds. Why should an owl be an enemy to small birds, a weasel to a crow, a turtle-dove to a candle- fly, the ichneumon (Indian rats) wasps to the spiders called jrftalangice, clucks to sea-gulls, the harpe to the buzzard-hawk, the wolf to the lion ? And besides, why should rats have an aversion to a tree where ants a: % e 1 Why is there so irreconcilable an enmity between a beetle and an eagle? for the fable was framed from the nature of that animal. Hence it is that near to Olynthus, in a certain place beetles will not live if they are brought into it. And then, again, between creatures that live in the water; what reason is there why the mullet and the pike mutually hate one another, as the conger and the lamprey, that gnaw one another's tails'? The lobster has such an hatred to the polypus that if it chance to see it near him he dies with fear. On the contrary, a certain hidden affection of goodwill has united other creatures, as peacocks and doves, turtles and parrots, blackbirds and thrushes, crows and herons, who mutually assist one another sigainst the fox; the harpe and kite against the triorche, which is a kind of hawk, and a common enemy to them. The musculus, a little fibii swimming before the whale, is a guide to him; nor does it appear.