DEER. | NATURAL HISTORY. 83 
Daw. 
I am no wiser than a daw. 
i. King Henry VI, ii. 4, 18. 
Tue Daw fights with the owl, because the owl has but 
weak sight by day; for this reason the Daw carries off 
the owl’s eggs and eats them. Its flesh causes itching in 
the head, for itself loves to be scratched on the head. 
It is said to go mad often; so that it often hangs itself 
in the forked branches of trees. 
Hortus Sanitatis, bk. ii, chs. lxxx. and lv. 
Dead Men’s Fingers. 
Long purples 
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, 
But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them. 
Hamtet, iv. 7, 171. 
[Dead Men’s Fingers is the Orchis mascula, or, as Gerard 
calls it, Satyrion Royal or finger orchis; the plant has this 
name from the shape and colour of the root.] 
Deer. 
Love’s Lasour’s Lost, iv. 2, 3 ¢f seg. 
Tue most excellent of all animals. 
Minshew’s Dictionary, s.v. 
Cf. Hart. 
In the blood of these kind of Deer [Fallow-Deer] are 
not strings or fibres, wherefore it doth not congeal as other 
doth, and this is assigned to be one cause of their fearful 
nature ; they are also said to have no gall. Their blood 
doth increase above measure melancholy. The dung or fime 
of this beast, mingled with oil of myrtles, increaseth hair, 
and amendeth those which are corrupt. Some of the late 
writers do prescribe the fat of a mole, of a Deer, and of 
a bear, mingled together to rub the head withal for increase 
of memory. Topsell, “ Four-footed Beasts,” p. go. 
