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CURIOUS CREATURES. 



any shell, instead whereof it is covered with a very 

 thicke skinne, which is able to withstand the greatest 

 force of an easie blow or fall. They say, moreover, 

 that this Egge is layd onely in the Summer time, about 

 the beginning of the Dogge-dayes, being not so long 

 as a Hens Egge, but round and orbiculer : Sometimes 

 of a Foxie, sometimes of a yellowish muddy colour, 

 which Egge is generated of the putrified seed of the 

 Cocke, and afterward sat upon by a Snake or a Toad, 

 bringeth forth the Cockatrice, being halfe a foot in 

 length, the hinder part like a Snake, the former part 

 like a Cocke, because of a treble combe on his forehead. 



" But the vulger opinion of Europe is, that the Egge is 

 nourished by a Toad, and not by a Snake ; howbeit, in 

 better experience it is found that the Cocke doth sit 

 on that egge himselfe : whereof Levinns Lernnius in his 

 twelfth booke of the hidden miracles of nature, hath this 

 discourse, in the fourth chapter thereof. There hap- 

 pened (saith he) within our memory in the Citty Pirizaa, 

 that there were two old Cockes which had layd Egges, 

 but they could not, with clubs and staves drive them 

 from the Egges, untill they were forced to breake the 

 egges in sunder, and strangle the Cockes. . . . 



" There be many grave humaine Writers, whose 

 authority is irrefragable, affirming not onely that there 

 be cockatrices, but also that they infect the ayre, and 

 kill with their sight. And Mercurial! affirmcth, that 

 when he was with Maximilian the Emperour, hee saw 

 the carkase of a cockatrice, reserved in his treasury 

 among his undoubted monuments. . . . Wee doe read 

 that in Rome, in the dayes of Pope Leo the fourth (847 

 to 855), there was a cockatrice found in a Vault of a 

 Church or Chappell, dedicated to Saint Lucea, whose 



