56 BIRDS IN LEGEND 



shoe for a second course. In heraldry, which is a 

 museum of antique notions, the ostrich, when used as a 

 bearing, is always depicted as holding in its mouth a 

 Passion-nail (emblem of the Church militant), or a horse- 

 shoe (reminder of knightly Prowess on horseback), or 

 a key (signifying religious and temporal power). 



An amusing passage in Sir Thomas Browne's famous 

 book, Common and Vulgar Errors 33 — which is a queer 

 combination of sagacity, ignorance, superstition and 

 credulity — is his solemn argument against the belief 

 prevalent in his day (1605-82) that ostriches ate iron; 

 but he quotes his predecessors from Aristotle down to 

 show how many philosophers have given it credence with- 

 out proof. The great misfortune of medieval thinkers 

 appears to have been that they were bound hand and foot 

 to the dead knowledge contained in ancient Greek and 

 Latin books — a sort of mental mortmain that blocked 

 any progress in science. They made of Aristotle, 

 especially, a sort of sacred fetish, whose statements and 

 conclusions must not be "checked" by any fresh observa- 

 tion or experiment. Browne was one of the first to ex- 

 hibit a little independence of judgment, and to suspect 

 that possibly, as Lowell puts it, "they didn't know every- 

 thing down in Judee." 



"As for Pliny," Sir Thomas informs us, "he saith 

 plainly that the ostrich concocteth whatever it eateth. 

 Now the Doctor acknowledgeth it eats iron: ergo, ac- 

 cording to Pliny it concocts iron. Africandus tells us 

 that it devours iron. Farnelius is so far from extenua- 

 ting the matter that he plainly confirms it, and shows that 

 this concoction is performed by the nature of its whole 

 essence. As for Riolanus, his denial without ground we 

 regard not. Albertus speaks not of iron but of stones 



