Onocrotahis 1 2 5 



Now in a few words I will portray to you that bird 

 which they assert to be the Onocrotalus. In general make 

 of body it is like the Heron, with long legs, though shorter 

 than that bird's. The neck is long and marvellously thick 

 with plumes, the beak is neither short nor blunt. Very black 

 feathers clothe the head, but on the body generally they 

 are dusky and pale, and most thickly sprinkled with black 

 spots. It has very long feet, indeed there is a span's length 

 from the claw-tips of the middle toe of either foot to the 

 heel of the same. It has very long claws, for that which 

 serves in birds the purpose of a heel exceeds an inch and 

 a half in length, on which account our countrymen use it to 

 pick their teeth, and mount it in silver. The middle toe 

 of either foot, which is longer than the rest, has a prodigious 

 claw, that is to say, toothed and serrated, not unlike the 

 shells of little scallops are, doubtless contrived by nature 

 to retain the slippery eels, which the bird catches. The tail 

 is very short, the gullet most capacious, and it uses it in the 

 place of a crop. It has a belly not like that of other birds, 

 but like that of a dog ; it also is large and capacious. 

 But lest what I have written thus far of this bird seem 

 false to anyone, or lest I seem to have learnt the above 

 from the reports of others rather than from sure experience : 

 while the first pages of this book were still at press, and 

 while I was examining the bird and was dissecting it, and 

 taking note whether it really had a belly and a stomach 

 such as Pliny had assigned to it, there were assisting me 

 Joannes Echthius, a very learned man and a most zealous 

 student of the more abstruse secrets of nature, a physician 

 much renowned among the men of Cullen : Cornelius 

 Sittardus decorated with the highest laurel-wreath of Medi- 

 cine : Marcus Lubertus Estius, professor of the liberal arts, 

 both excellently skilled in that of simpling, and wonderfully 

 earnest, and as well as these Conradus Embecanus, a man 

 well-informed in no common degree, and a remarkably careful 

 corrector in the printing-house of Gymnicus, with certain 

 others versed in learned arts, who can and will bear witness 

 to the fact that I have written nothing here about this bird 

 which I have not observed in company with all of them. 

 It sits about the sides of lakes and marshes, where putting 



