OUSEL.] NATURAL HISTORY. 225 



Ounce. 



MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, ii. 3. 



SOME have said when a man or beast is bitten with an 

 Ounce, presently mice flock unto him, and poison him with 

 their urine. The gall of this beast is deadly poison ; it 

 hateth all creatures, and destroyeth them. 



Topsell, "Four-footed Beasts," s.v. 



THE Ounce does not eat its prey, until it has hung it 

 up on high, but when it comes to a tree, it carries its prey 

 to the topmost branch, and eats it hanging. [Then follows 

 the above curious statement about the Ounce-bite and the 

 mice, with a story of a man bitten by an Ounce, " who had 

 himself carried out to sea in a bark," and so baffled the 

 mice.] Hortus Sanitatis, bk. ii. 158. 



Ousel. 



MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, iii. I, 128. 



THE Ousel or blackbird is white in Achaia. The Ousel 

 purges disgust to meat annually with laurel-leaves. The 

 Ousel changes its colour from black to russet, sings in 

 the summer, stutters in winter, changes about the solstice 

 its bill, which is transformed into ivory in year-old cocks. 

 The tame Ousel eats flesh against nature. The Ousel like 

 other birds does not shed its plumage, but changes its bill 

 to a white colour every year. And in the winter for 

 fatness it can scarcely fly. 



Ibid., bk. iii. 74. 



IF the feathers of the right wing of an Ousel be hung 

 up on a red thread, which has never been used, in the 

 middle of a house, no one will be able to sleep in that 

 house, until the wing has been taken down. And if its 

 heart be put under the head of a sleeper, and he be ques- 

 tioned, he will tell with a loud voice all that he has done. 

 And again if it be put in well-water with the blood of a 

 hoopoo, and mixed together, and then rubbed on the 

 temples of any man, he grows weak even to death. 



Albertus Magnus, " Of the Virtues of Animals." 



