NATURAL HISTORY LORE AND LEGEND NATURAL HISTORY LORE AND LEGEND BEING SOME FEW EXAMPLES OF QUAINT AND BY-GONE BELIEFS GATHERED IN FROM DIVERS AUTHORITIES, ANCIENT AND MEDIÆVAL, OF VARYING DEGREES OF RELIABILITY BY F. EDWARD HULME, F.L.S., F.S.A. AUTHOR OF “WAYSIDE SKETCHES,” “SUGGESTIONS IN FLORAL DESIGN,” “FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS,” AND DIVERS OTHER BOOKS THAT NEED NOT HERE BE SET FORTH “As some delighte moste to beholde Eche newe devyse and guyse, So some in workes of fathers olde Their studies exercise.” _“Historicall Expostulation” of John Halle, Chyrurgeon_, A.D 1565 BERNARD QUARITCH 15 PICCADILLY, LONDON 1895 LONDON: G. NORMAN AND SON, PRINTERS, FLORAL STREET, COVENT GARDEN. CONTENTS. PAGES CHAPTER I. Mediæval naturalists honest searchers after truth—Sir Emerson Tennant thereupon—Recent discoveries confirm many statements once contested—“Travellers’ tales”—Mediæval natural history largely based upon ancient—Difference of aim between modern and ancient and mediæval nature-study—The moral treatment—Illustrations from the “Speculum Mundi”—Falsification of natural facts justified by the ecclesiastics—Ready credulity a mediæval characteristic—Two examples thereof—The love of the marvellous—Astrological influences—The mental equipment of a mediæval surgeon—Quaint book titles—The unchanging East—Suttee, Juggernaut, &c. in the pages of mediæval writers—The “Mirabilia descripta” of Bishop Jordanus—The “Voiage and Travaile” of Maundevile—The coca plant—Burton’s “Miracles of Art and Nature,”—The “Historia Mundi” of Pliny—English editions of it—Herodotus—The writings of Aristotle—The sources of information in the Middle Ages—The praise of books—Books of travel—Munster’s “Cosmography”—The interest and beauty of old title-pages—Elephants in lieu of towns in the old maps—A tale of a tub—Herbert’s “Some Yeares Travels into Africa and Asia the Great”—The travels of Marco Polo—Geography of Peter Heylyn—Raleigh’s, Hakluyt’s, Purchas’, Struys’, Acosta’s books of travels—Medical books—Potter’s “Booke of Physicke”—Cogan’s “Haven of Health”—Indifference to animal suffering—“Bestiare Divin” of Guillaume—The “Bestiary” of Philip de Thaun—The Armories of Guillim, Legh, and Bossewell 1-53