82 LEAVES FROM THE 



pricked, they will heal, and leave the young birds with 

 the power of vision. This is far from impossible, espe- 

 cially when the creature is very young, for the humour 

 may be restored under the healed cornea — but pray, 

 gentle reader, do not try the experiment — and is pro- 

 bably the only authority on which Pliny and ^lian 

 founded their radical assertion ; but a story always gains 

 something as it goes. ' It is commonly said, that if a 

 man pluck the eies out of yong serpents, or yong swal- 

 lows, they wil have new again in their place.'* 



Then again, when the blattce, which seem to have been 

 as pernicious to the eggs and nestlings of the swallow as 

 they were to the bees,-|- persecuted a swallow's nest, the 

 parents, in the good old times, dashed down to the first 

 parsley bed they could find, plucked some of the leaves, 

 and dropped them into their domicile, when away scuttled 

 the intrusive insects, and not a blatta dared again to show 

 his antennae there as long as the crisp vegetable kept 

 guard. 



Now, really ! 



Inquu'e of ^lian ; put him on your desk for cross-ex- 

 amination, and see if you can shake his evidence. 



But if the foregoing story of the parsley startles you — 

 and how do you know that parsley will not drive away 

 blattce? — pray listen to the numerous ills which could be 

 cured by means of these hygeian creatures. Take the 

 ashes of the young — ^but of the bank martin remember — 

 and you have ' a singular and soveraigne remedy for the 

 deadly squinancy.'J Eat them whole, and defy quartan 

 agues ; or if you find it unpleasant to go the whole bird, 

 masticate their hearts with honey, or take one drachm 

 of their droppings in goats' or sheep's milk before the 



* Holland's Pliny. Pliny's words are, — ' Serpentium catulis, 

 et hirimdinum pullis, si quis eruat, renasci tradunt.' 



t Georg. iv. + Holland's Pliny. 



