CONGER.] NATURAL HISTORY. 69 



Cony. 



They will out of their burrows like conies after rain. 



CORIOLANUS, iv. 5, 226-7 



CONIES be called small hares and feeble, and they dig 

 the earth with their claws, and make them bowers and 

 dens under the earth, and dwell therein, and bring forth 

 many rabbits, and multiply right much. And rabbits be 

 so loved in the Balearic Isles that those rabbits without 

 mothers be taken and eaten of the men of the country, 

 though the guts be unneath cleansed. As many dens as 

 be in the increasing [excrement ("Bartholomew)] of the 

 Conies, so many years they have of age. In [that part of] 

 the body be so many holes as the Conies have years. It 

 is said that they have both sexes, male and female. And is a 

 profitable beast both to meat and to clothing, and to many 

 manner medicines. Bartholomew (Bertkelet), bk. xviii. 68. 



BY night he devours vine-shoots and fruits, but in the 

 morning he enters his den, and makes the opening of it 

 level with the soil by dust from within, lest men coming 

 past by day should find out his dwelling. 



Hortus Sanitatis, bk. ii. ch. xlv. 



Conger. 



Eats conger and fennel. 



ii. KING HENRY IV., ii. 4, 229. 



CONGER is a sea-fish, as long as a lamprey, but much 

 larger in the body. When the wind blows strongly it 

 grows fat, and its flesh is most sweet to eat. It is an 

 enemy to lampreys and other fish, yet it is strong, so that 

 it can tear a polypus by the strength of its teeth. The 

 Conger and the lamprey hate one another, and bite each 

 other's tails. Hortus Sanifatis ^ bk> i;i> clu xx i v . 



THE Conger hath many wiles, and is witty and wily of 

 getting of meat, for when he seeth meat on a hook, he 

 dreadeth the hook, and biteth not the bait, but holdeth 



