44 THE NEW BIOLOGY 



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experience in foreign lands, such as the decoying 

 sparrowhawks on the Propontis, or by discussing the 

 etymology of the French names of common birds, or by 

 giving the points of a good falcon, or by describing the 

 succession of the dishes at a French banquet, or by 

 explaining why the trail of a woodcock is eatable. A 

 few sentences of "Naturel" (natural history) are often 

 introduced into the description, and we find occasional 

 hints as to the use of birds in medicine, such as that the 

 blood of the partridge is good for sore eyes. Ancient 

 authors are regularly quoted, and pains are taken to 

 identify the birds of which they speak. Fabulous stories 

 are mentioned, though with due scepticism ; Belon does 

 not believe, for example, that the sparrowhawk is the 

 father of the cuckoo, nor that barnacle-geese are gene- 

 rated from floating wrecks (they have been seen, he tells 

 us, to lay eggs) ; nor that the chameleon feeds on air. 



What we should now call orders of birds are indis- 

 tinctly recognised, but only as convenient headings. It 

 was far too early for any naturalist to inquire how there 

 come to be natural assemblages of birds, or why one 

 principle of arrangement is to be preferred to another. 

 Belon adopts Aristotle's groups as far as they go ; he 

 recognises the birds of prey, the swimming birds, and 

 the waders with long legs, joining with these last the 

 kingfisher and the bee-eater ; his remaining groups are 

 the birds which nest on the ground, then a very miscel- 

 laneous group (crows, pigeons, parrots, &c.), which agree 

 only in being of fair size and nesting in any situation ; 

 his last section consists of the songsters. Tradition com- 

 pelled Belon to put the bat among the nocturnal birds 

 of prey, but he did not really take it to be a bird. 



In his introduction Belon gives on opposite pages 

 large figures of a human skeleton and that of a bird, 



