FABLE AND FOLKLORE 61 



tall, pointed crest standing up like a spur on the top of 

 its head, and this fact gives "point," in more senses than 

 one, to the extraordinary version of the Herodotus story 

 in one of the old plays, The White Devil, by John Web- 

 ster (1612), where an actor says: 



"Stay, my lord ! I'll tell you a tale. The crocodile, which 

 lives in the river Nilus, hath a worm breeds i' the teeth of 't, 

 which puts it to extreme anguish : a little bird, no bigger than 

 a wren, is barber-surgeon to this crocodile; flies into the jaws 

 of 't, picks out the worm, and brings present remedy. The fish, 

 glad of ease, but ingrateful to her that did it, that the bird may 

 not talk largely of her abroad for nonpayment, closeth her 

 chaps, intending to swallow her, and so put her to perpetual 

 silence. But nature, loathing such ingratitude, hath armed this 

 bird with a quill or prick on the head, top o' the which wounds 

 the crocodile i' the mouth, forceth her open her bloody prison, 

 and away flies the pretty tooth-picker from her cruel patient." 



A most curious series of mistakes has arisen around 

 this matter. Linguists tell us that the common name 

 among the ancient Greeks for a plover was trochilus 

 (rpoxtW), and that this is the word used by Herodotus for 

 his crocodile-bird. But in certain passages of his His- 

 tory of Animals Aristotle uses this word to designate a 

 wren ; it has been supposed that this was a copyist's error, 

 writing carelessly rpoxiAos for Vx i ^ 0? > but it was repeated 

 by Pliny in recounting what Herodotus had related, and 

 this naturally led to the statement by some medieval com- 

 pilers that the crocodile's tooth-cleaner was a wren. 

 This, however, is not the limit of the confusion, for when 

 American hummingbirds became known in Europe, and 

 were placed by some naturalists of the 17th century in 

 the Linnaean genus (Trochilus) with the wrens, one 

 writer at least, Paul Lucas, 1774 (if Brewer's Handbook 

 may be trusted), asserted that the hummingbird as well 



