VII 



Aristotle on Birds 181 



birds and fishes is most surprisingly large. And it 

 surely is not wonderful that he and all other old 

 naturalists should have fallen into this error about 

 birds, if we consider that it was but a guess, based on 

 their knowledge of the ways of bats, snakes, and other 

 hibernating creatures. I think it is only fair to 

 Aristotle to compare him in this matter with the 

 best of all our early English ornithologists, Francis 

 Willughby, whose book on birds was edited after his 

 death by his friend Eay, in 1678. He says : " What 

 becomes of Swallows in winter-time, whether they fly 

 into other countries, or lie torpid in hollow trees, 

 neither are most historians agreed, nor can we 

 certainly determine. To us it seems more probable 

 that they fly into hot countries, Egypt, Ethiopia, etc., 

 than that they lurk in hollow trees, or lie in water 

 under the ice in northern countries, as Olaus Magnus 

 reports." And then he quotes Herodotus and Peter 

 Martyr to bear him out. You see that Willughby 

 has good sense, but has not got much further than 

 Aristotle. And it must be allowed that Aristotle 

 does not tell us, as Willughby does, that " a Swallow's 

 nest heals the redness of the eyes, and is good for the 

 bite of a viper " ; nor that one hundred Swallows, 

 with an ounce of castor-oil, and plenty of white wine, 

 are an admirable medicine for the falling sickness. 1 

 There is another affection to which birds are 



1 Willughby 's Ornithology, ed. 1678, pp. 211, 212. 



