CURIOUS CREATURES. 67 



taken, it will sigh like a young childe. His skin is of an 

 ashe-colour, and hairie like a Beare : he hath but three 

 clawes on a foote, as longe as foure fingers, and like the 

 thornes of Privet, whereby he climbeth up into the highest 

 trees, and for the most part liveth of the leaves of a certain 

 tree, beeing of an exceeding heighth, which the Americans 

 call Amahut, and thereof this beast is called Haut. Their 

 tayle is about three fingers long, having very little haire 

 thereon ; it hath beene often tried, that though it suffer 

 any famine, it will not eate the fleshe of a living man, 

 and one of them was given me by a French-man, which 

 I kept alive sixe and twenty daies, and at the last it was 

 killed by Dogges, and in that time when I had set it 

 abroad in the open ayre, I observed that, although it often 

 rained, yet was that beast never wet. 1 When it is tame, it 

 is very loving to a man, and desirous to climbe uppe 

 to his shoulders, which those naked Amerycans cannot 

 endure, by reason of the sharpnesse of his Clawes." 



ANIMAL LORE. 



We are indebted to Pliny for much strange animal 

 lore which, however, will scarcely bear the fierce light 

 of modern investigation. Thus, he tells us of places in 

 which certain animals are not to be found, and narrates 

 some very curious zoological anecdotes thereon. " It is 

 a remarkable fact, that nature has not only assigned 

 different countries to different animals, but that even in 

 the same country it has denied certain species to certain 

 localities. In Italy, the dormouse is found in one part 

 only, the Messian forest. In Lycia, the gazelle never 

 passes beyond the mountains which border upon Syria ; 



1 The italics are mine. J. A. 



