BOOK X. xxxiii. 68-xxxiv. 71 



larger than night-owls; it has projecting feathery 

 ears, whence its name — some give it the Latin name 

 ' axio ' ; moreover it is a bird that copies other 

 kinds and is a hanger-on, and it perfoi'ms a kind of 

 dance. Like the night-owl it is caught without 

 difficulty if one goes round it while its attention is 

 fixed on somebody else. If a wind blowing against 

 them begins to hold up a flight of these birds, they 

 pick up little stones as ballast or fill their throat with 

 sand to steady their flight. Quails are very fond of 

 eating poison seed, on account of which our tables 

 have condemned them ; and moreover it is customary 

 to spit at the sight of them as a charm against 

 epilepsy, to which they are the only living creatures 

 that are liable besides man. 



XXXIV. Swallows, the only flesh-eating '^ bird P^^f"^- 

 among those that have not hooked talons, also usefor 

 migrate in the winter months ; but they only retire '"^**'^^*- 

 to places near at hand, making for the sunny guUeys 

 in the mountains, and they have before now been 

 found there moulted and bare of feathers. It is 

 said that they do not enter under the roofs of Thebes, 

 because that city has been so often captui-ed, nor at 

 Bizye in Thrace on account of the crimes of Tereus. 

 A man of knightly rank at Volterra, Caecina, who 

 owned a racing four-in-hand, used to catch swallows 

 and take them with him to Rome and despatch 

 them to take the news of a win to his friends, as they 

 returned to the same nest ; they had the winning 

 colour painted on them. Also Fabius Pictor 

 records in his Annals that when a Roman garrison 

 was besieged by the Ligurians a swallow taken from 

 her nestUngs was brought to him for him to indicate 

 by knots made in a thread tied to its foot how 



337 



