Notes 



Pliny (Hist. Nat., vii. 4) gravely says : " The change of females into males is 

 not fabulous. We find in the Annals, that in the consulate of Licinius Crassus 

 and Crassus Longinus, a boy, living under the parental roof, was turned into a 

 virgin, and by order of the Augurs abandoned on a desert island. Licinius Mucianus 

 declared that he saw in Argos, one Arescon, who had borne the name of Arescusa, 

 and had been married, but getting a beard and virility, took a wife. He saw also 

 a boy of the same kind at Smyrna. / myself saw in Africa, L. Cossicius, a citizen 

 of Thyrsdris, who was changed into a man on his (her ?) marriage-day." The 

 reader may remember how Tiresias was turned into a woman by striking two 

 copulating snakes, and back again into a man seven years afterwards by the same 

 process ; and how he lost his sight from the revenge of Juno, by deciding a delicate 

 nuptial question between her and Jupiter, ten to one against the goddess. Montaigne 

 also asserts that he saw a man who had once been a woman. B. 



Page 132. Caspar Peucerus. Gaspar Peucer was Melancthon's son-in-law, 

 and editor of his works. He was himself an eminent physician and naturalist, and 

 wrote many medical works, with a treatise on monies, weights, and measures. He 

 suffered an imprisonment of ten years, during which time he wrote his thoughts on 

 the margin of books with an ink made of burnt crusts and wine. He died 1602, 

 aged seventy-seven. Walton quotes him through Casaubon, and this whole para- 

 graph was added to the fifth edition. B. 



Page 132. a people that once a year turn wolves. The literature and the science 

 of lycanthropy has increased greatly during the last few years. One of the most 

 fascinating books on the subject is Mr. Baring Gould's 'Book of the Were-wolves, in 

 which, among others, he gives an account of the most famous of the loups-garoux, 

 the Marechal de Retz, said to be the original of Blue Beard, from the purple tinge 

 given to his beard by his frequent baths in blood. 



Dr. Bethune has a long and learned note on the subject. 



Page 135. Yes, and hear and smell too. That fish hear, is confirmed by the 

 authority of late writers : Swammerdam asserts it, and adds, " They have a wonder- 

 ful labyrinth of ear for the purpose." Of Instcts, London, 1758, p. 50. A clergy- 

 man, a friend of mine, assures me that at the Abbey of St. Bernard, near Antwerp, 

 he saw trout come at the whistling of the feeder. H. 



I have read somewhere of a trout who was kept for a long time in a little 

 spring pond, that answered to the name of " Tom." In the dyr Observer there 

 was mention made of an eel in a garden well, which came to be fed out of a 

 spoon by the children on being called by his name, Rob Roy. Pickering's ^fnec. 

 of Fish and Fishing, p. 138. Lucian (Syrian goddess) says: "There is also an 

 adjacent lake, very deep, in which many sacred fishes are kept ; some of the 

 largest have names given to them, and come when they are called." The solu- 

 tion of the question may be, that the instinct of fishes does not lead them to be 

 alarmed by noises with which they have no concern ; but that they soon learn to 

 obey a sound when it is for their benefit. B. 



415 



