To prove that he has not gone about the world with eyes closed, he remarks that mice are generated of putrefaction, frogs of rotten dust and rain, red toads of dirt and καταμήνια, and serpents of the hair of horses’ manes or of a dead man’s back-marrow. He advises the creation of new animals by crossbreeding; a hunting dog, of a mastiff and a lioness or tigress; a trick dog, of a bitch and an ape; and birds with delicious flesh for gourmets, of a cock and a peahen, or of a cock pheasant and a plain hen. His method of making a bird sociable and friendly is quaint and unique. He says that, before the creature has got its feathers, you must break off its lower beak even to the jaw. Then, having not the wherewithal to peck up food, it must come to its master to be fed. He advocates the creation of new fruits which sound most daintily, by grafting a mulberry on a chestnut tree, a peach on a nut, a quince on a pear, a citron on an apple, and a cherry on a bay. He advises the making of bread with dates and walnuts; and of wine with quinces. He will make precious stones—a jacinth by putting lead into an earthen pot, and setting it in a glass-maker’s furnace until the lead is vitrified: or an emerald by dissolving silver in aqua-fortis, casting in plates of copper to which the composition will adhere, drying the plates in the sun, setting them in an earthen pot for some days in a glass-maker’s furnace. He says that green and merry dreams may be procured by eating balm, or bugloss, or bows of poplar; and black and melancholy dreams by eating beans, lentils, onions, garlic, leeks. He will cure toothache with roots of pellitory or of herbane, bruised. For the care of the teeth he recommends a wash made of leaves of mastic, rosemary, sage, and bramble, macerated in Greek wine, (_i.e._, a strong rich wine grown in dry volcanic soil:) or a tooth-powder made of barley bread-crumbs browned with salt. But his recipe for white and pearly teeth is a master-piece. “Take three handfuls each of flowers and leaves of sage, nettle, rosemary, mallow, olive, plantain, and rind of walnut roots; two handfuls each of rock-rose (κίστος), horehound, bramble-tops; a pound of flower and half a pound of seed of myrtle; two handfuls of rose buds; two drachms each of sandal-wood, coriander, and citron-pips; three drachms of cinnamon; ten drachms of cypress nuts; five green pine-cones; two drachms each of mastic and Armenian bole or clay. Reduce all these to powder. Infuse them in sharp black wine. Macerate them for three days. Slightly press out the wine. Put them in an alembic and distil them on a gentle fire. Boil the distillation till two ounces of alum is dissolved in it. Keep in a close-stopped vial: and, for use, fill the mouth with the lotion, and rub the teeth with a finger wrapped in fine linen.”