A SHARP LOOKOUT. 



21 



open and patent to all who have eyes in their heads, 

 and have ever had to do with them. And Pliny 

 names authors who had devoted their whole lives to 

 the study of the subject. 



But the ancients, like women and children, were 

 not accurate observers. Just at the critical moment 

 their eyes were unsteady, or their fancy, or their 

 credulity, or their impatience got the better of them, 

 so that their science was half fact and half fable. 

 Thus, for instance, because the young cuckoo at times 

 appeared to take the head of its small foster mother 

 quite into its mouth while receiving its food, they be- 

 lieved that it finally devoured her. Pliny, who em- 

 bodied the science of his times in his natural history, 

 says of the wasp that it carries spiders to its nest and 

 then sits upon them until it hatches its young from 

 them. A little careful observation would have shown 

 him that this was only a half-truth ; that the whole 

 truth was that the spiders were entombed with the 

 egg of the wasp to serve as food for the young when 

 the egg shall have hatched. 



What curious questions Plutarch discusses, as, for 

 instance, " What is the reason that a bucket of water 

 drawn out of a well, if it stands all night in the air 

 that is in the well, is more cold in the morning than 

 the rest of the water ? " He could probably have 

 given many reasons why "a watched pot never 

 boils." The ancients, the same author says, held that 

 the bodies of those killed by lightning never putrefy ; 

 that the sight of a ram quiets an enraged elephant ; 



