CENTURY IX. 97 



for puets, gulls, shovellers, ducks, do feed upon flesh, 

 and yet are good meat ; and we see that those birds 

 which are of prey, or feed upon flesh, are good meat 

 when they are very young ; as hawks, rooks out of the 

 nest, owls, &c. Man s flesh is not eaten. The reasons 

 ai e three : first, because men in humanity do abhor it : 

 secondly, because no living creature that dieth of itself 

 is good to eat : and therefore the cannibals themselves 

 eat no man s-flesh of those that die of themselves, but 

 of such as are slain : the third is, because there must 

 be generally some disparity between the nourishment 

 and the body nourished ; and they must not be over- 

 near, or like : yet we see that in great weaknesses and 

 consumptions, men have been sustained with woman s 

 milk ; and Ficinus fondly (as I conceive) adviseth, for 

 the prolongation of life, that a vein be opened in the 

 arm of some wholesome young man, and the blood to 

 be sucked. 1 It is said that witches do greedily eat 

 man s flesh ; which if it be true, besides a devilish 

 appetite in them, it is likely to proceed for that man s 

 flesh may send up high and pleasing vapours, which 

 may stir the imagination ; and witches felicity is 

 chiefly in imagination, as hath been said. 



Experiment solitary touching the salamander. 



860. There is an ancient received tradition of the 

 salamander, that it liveth in the fire, and hath force 

 also to extinguish the fire. It must have two things, if 

 it be true, to this operation : the one a very close skin, 

 whereby flame, which in the midst is not so hot, can 

 not enter ; for we see that if the palm of the hand be 

 anointed thick with white of egg, and then aqua vitae 



1 Ficinus, De vita producenda, ii. 11. 



VOL. V. 1 



