And do you in your hall preserve a flock Of fruitful doves from Sicily or Dracontium, For it is said that neither kites nor hawks Incline to hurt those choice and sacred birds. 52. We must also mention ducks. The male of these birds, as Alexander the Myndian says, is larger than the female, and has a more richly coloured plumage: but the bird which is called the glaucion, from the colour of its eyes, is a little smaller than the duck. And of the species called boscades the male is marked all over with lines, and he also is less than the duck; and the males have short beaks, too small to be in fair proportion to their size: but the small diver is the least of all aquatic birds, being of a dirty black plumage, and it has a sharp beak, turning upwards towards the eyes, and it goes a great deal under water. There is also another species of the boscades, larger than the duck, but smaller than the chenalopex: but the species which are called phascades are a little larger than the small divers, but in all other respects they resemble the ducks. And the kind called uria are not much smaller than the duck, but as to its plumage it is of a dirty earthenware colour, and it has a long and narrow beak: but the coot, which also has a narrow beak, is of a rounder shape, and is of an ash colour about the stomach, and rather blacker on the back. But Aristophanes, in his Acharnians, in the following lines, mentions the duck and the diver, from whose names (νῆττα and κολυμβὰς) we get the verbs νήχομαι, to swim, and κολυμβάω, to dive, with a great many other water birds— Ducks too, and jackdaws, woodcocks too, and coots, And wrens, and divers. And Callimachus also mentions them in his treatise on Birds. 53. We often also had put before us the dish called parastatæ, which is mentioned by Epænetus in his Cookery Book, and by Semaristus in the third and fourth books of his treatise on Synonymes. And it is testicles which are called by this name. But when some meat was served up with a very fragrant sauce, and when some one said,—Give me a plate of that suffocated meat, that Dædalus of names, Ulpian, said—I myself shall be suffocated if you do not tell me where you found any mention of meat of that kind; for I will not name them so before I know. And he said, Strattis, in his Macedonians or Cinesias, has said— Take care, and often have some suffocated meat. And Eubulus, in his Catacollomenos, says— And platters heap'd with quantities of meat Suffocated in the Sicilian fashion. And Aristophanes, in his Wasps, has said— Some suffocated meat in a platter. And Cratinus, in his Delian Women, says— And therefore do you take some meat and pound it, Having first neatly suffocated it. And Antiphanes, in his Countryman, says—