[96] “He was but as a cuckoo is in June,” says Shakespeare in reference to Richard II., that is to say, he had lost the power to attract, his utterances no longer commanded attention. [97] Thus Christopher Marlowe enshrines the old belief in the lines:— “But how now stands the wind? Into what corner peers my halcyon’s bill?” While Shakespeare, in King Lear, refers to the time-servers who “turn their halcyon beaks with every gale and vary of their masters.” [98] The idea is at least as old as Pliny, as he mentions it in his “Natural History” as a recognized fact too well-known to need any apology or explanation. Theocritus in his seventh idyll dwells on it, and it is found in the writings of Pliny and many other ancient authors. [99] A quaint little octavo on this subject is that of Dr. Warder, “The true Amazons or the Monarchy of Bees,” being a new discovery and Improvement of those wonderful creatures. The book went through several editions. The one that came under our notice is the third; it is dated 1716. [100] Ammianus Marcellinus has put it upon record that in imitation of the ingenuity of the crane in assuring vigilance, Alexander the Great was accustomed to rest with a silver ball in his hand, so that on the slightest movement it might fall and wake him. This is certainly heroic treatment, since even such an one as Alexander might fairly claim the necessity that other mortals feel of uninterrupted rest. It reminds one of the dictum of the great Duke of Wellington in defence of his camp-bedstead, accommodation so confined that one could scarcely turn round in it, that directly a man begins to think of turning round it is time to turn out. [101] In “A Mirror for Mathematics, a Golden Gem for Geometricians, a sure Safety for Saylers, and an auncient Antiquary for Astronomers and Astrologians,” by Robert Tanner, Gent, Practitioner in Astrologie and Physic, a book published in the year 1587, we find an “Epistle dedicatourie” to Lord Howard of Effingham, commencing:—“The Cranes when they fly out of Cilicia, over the mountain Taurus, carrie in their mouths a pebble stone, lest by their chattering they should be ceased upon by the eagles, which birds, Right Honourable, might teach me silence,” &c., &c. [102] “This creature is in thicknesse as big as a man’s wrist, and of length proportionable to that thicknesse.”—_Speculum Mundi._ [103] The “Annals of Winchester,” for the year 1177, inform us that “in this yeare Dragons were sene of many in England.” In 1274 it is recorded that there was an earthquake on the Eve of St. Nicholas’ Day, and that there appeared “a fiery dragon which frightened the English.”