MEMOIR OF PLINY. 65 



not only learn them as a lesson, but they learn them 

 with a delight and pleasure, insomuch that a man 

 shall find them studying thereupon and conning the 

 said lesson. It is said that none of their kinde are 

 good to bee made scholars, but such only as feed vp- 

 on mast, and among them those that have five toes 

 to their feet, and two yeeres of age. And their 

 tongue is broader than ordinarie, like as they bee all 

 that counterfeit man's voice, each one in their kinde. 

 Agripina the empresse, wife to Claudius Caesar, 

 had a black birde, or throstle, at what time as I com- 

 piled this book, who could counterfeit man's speech, 

 a thing never seen nor known before. The two 

 Ceesars, also, the young princes (Germanicus and 

 Drusus), had one stare and sundry nightingales 

 taught to parle Greeke and Latine. Moreouer, they 

 would study vpon their lessons, and meditate all day 

 long, and from day to day come out with new words 

 still ; yea, and were able to continue a long discourse." 

 We shall close our ornithological extracts with 

 an anecdote of " the wit and vnderstanding" of a 

 raven, which attracted the notice and became a spe- 

 cial favourite of the Roman people. " In the daies 

 of Tiberius there was a young rauen hatched in a 

 nest vpon the church of Castor and Pollux, which to 

 make a triall how he could flie, took his first flight 

 into a shoemaker's shop, just over against the said 

 church. The master of the shop was well enough 

 content to receiue this bird, as commended to him 

 from so sacred a place, and in that regard set great 



VOL. IX. E 



