“When the cock is past seven years old an egg grows in his belly, and when he feels this egg, he wonders very much, and sustains the greatest anxiety any animal can suffer. He seeks, privately, a warm place on a dunghill or in a stable, and scratches with his feet, until he has formed a hole to lay his egg in. And when the cock has dug his hole he goes ten times a day to it, for all day he thinks that he is going to be delivered. And the nature of the toad is such that it smells the venom which the cock carries in his belly, consequently it watches him, so that the cock cannot go to the hole without being seen by it. And as soon as the cock leaves the place where he has to lay his egg, the toad is immediately there to see if the egg has been laid; for his nature is such, that he hatches the egg if he can obtain it. And when he has hatched it, until it is time to open, it produces an animal that has the head, and neck, and breast of a cock, and from thence downwards, the body of a serpent.”--_Translation from the MS. Bestiarium_, Bib. Roy. Brussels, No. 10074. That cocks, sometimes in the middle ages, forgot themselves so far as to lay eggs, appears from a lawsuit which poor chanticleer had at Basle in 1474, when he was convicted, condemned, and, with his egg, burned at the stake for a sorcerer, with as much pomp and ceremony as if he had been a Protestant or other heretic. The APE was, in bygone times, the sign of an inn in Philip Lane, near London wall; all that now remains of this ancient hostelry is a stone carving of a monkey squatted on its haunches, and eating an apple; under it the date 1670, and the initial B. The courtyard, where the lumbering coaches used to arrive and depart, is now an open space, round which houses are built. The RACOON is a painted sign at Dalston, but a hyæna seems to have sat for the portrait; the HIPPOPOTAMUS occurs in New-England Street, Brighton; the IBEX at Chadelworth, Wantage; the CROCODILE in Higham Street, Norwich; the CAMEL may be met with in a few instances, and at Weston Peverell, Plymouth, there is the sign of the CAMEL’S HEAD. Finally, there is the KANGAROO, of which, occasionally, an example may be seen, set up probably by some landlord who had tried his luck in Australia. The CIVET is common all over Europe as a perfumer’s sign, as it was said to produce musk. A Dutch perfumer in the seventeenth century wrote under his sign:-- “Dit ’s in de Civet kat, gelyk gy kunt aanschouwen, Maar komt hier binnen, hier zyn parfuimen voor mannen en vrouwen.”[220] The HEDGEHOG was never very common. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth it was the sign of William Seeres, bookseller, in St Paul’s Churchyard, who put it up, according to Bagford, on account of its being the badge of his former master Sir Henry Sydney.[221] Apparently this same house was concerned in the following strange affair:--