398 ALDROVANDI. [CHAP. v. 



in its mournful and very sweet song (" lamentabile et sua- 

 vissimo suo cantu") of the affront he had put upon it, by 

 giving the precedence, in his Ornithologia, to other less 

 celebrated birds. According to him, the Halcyon of the 

 ancients no longer exists ; in which opinion we may be- 

 lieve him to be correct, if the observations of the old 

 Poets and Philosophers are required to be verified if 

 we are to find a bird which " at the time of its nidula- 

 tion, which happeneth about the brumal solstice, maketh 

 a nest which floateth upon the sea," and which, after 

 death, if suspended in a room, veers to the quarter 

 whence the wind happens to blow, as unerringly and 

 surely as the magnetic needle continually points to the 

 pole. It was another vulgar belief, that if their intes- 

 tines only were extracted, and their bodies hung up to 

 dry, they would moult every year exactly as if they were 

 alive ; but Aldrovandi assures us that he had one sus- 

 pended in his museum for several years, and yet was 

 never able to perceive the renewal of the feathers. 

 " Most moderns," he adds, " believe the Ispida to be the 

 Halcyon of the ancients : although we disapprove of the 

 opinion, yet we grant them to be nearly allied to it ; and 

 the ancients have recorded many things of the Alcyon 

 which are also observed in the Ispida." Pliny's descrip- 

 tion is not so very wide of the mark : " Ipsa avis paulo 

 amplior passere, colore cyaneo ex parte majore, tan turn 

 purpureis, et candidis admixtis pennis."* The bird 

 itself is a little larger than a Sparrow, of an azure 

 colour for the greater part, only with a mixture of 

 purple and white feathers. 



Aldrovandi's figure of the Ispida is an excellent like- 



* Lib. 10, c. 31. 



