Ill] OF POULTRY 289 



when most chicks are being born, and the latter are 

 more easily fattened at this time. Thus they are 

 especially profitable at this season of the year. 



CHAPTER IX 



OF POULTRY 



I I MISS, said Axius, two branches of the art of 

 fattening * birds, those connected with wood pigeons 

 and hens, I mean, and I shall be glad if you, Merula, 

 will now speak about them — then if anything in 

 the other branches remains proper to be discussed 

 we can discuss^ it. Well [said Merula] the term 



common in the thirteenth century in Italy. Crescentius (late 

 thirteenth century) writes: "The fowlers of Lombardy, espe- 

 cially at Cremona, net wild turtle-doves all through the summer 

 and shut them up in a small well-lighted building. They give 

 them clean water and as much millet seed as they will eat, 

 and keep them until winter or well into the autumn. As many 

 as fifteen hundred of them are kept in one place, and grow 

 ineffably fat ! " 



' Farturae. The reading of the Archetype was sarsurae 

 assurae. It seems probable that the second word is a careless 

 repetition of the first, and that sarsurae is iov farturae ^ though 

 the latter corruption is difficult to account for. In the next 

 line Keil brackets palumbis — wrongly 1 think, for (i) the 

 plural membra implies at least two branches, and (2) after 

 liens have been discussed, a few words are actually given to 

 wood-pigeons— ^/ttw^/j (9, 21). Perhaps the original words 

 were de palumbis et gallinis. 



■ Ratiocinari. Properly a book-keeper's word, meaning to 

 "audit an account/' to "reckon." Cf. Cicero (Phil., ii, 22): 



U 



