FOX. | NATURAL HISTORY. 119 
As to Flies, we have none that can do hurt or hindrance 
naturally unto any. The cut- or girt-waisted (for so I 
English the word Insecta) are the hornets, wasps, bees, and 
such like, whereof we have great store, and of which an 
opinion is conceived that the first do breed of the corrup- 
tion of dead horses, the second of pears and apples, and 
the last of kine and oxen; which may be true, especially 
the first and latter in some parts of the beast, and not 
their whole substances, as- also in the second, sith [since] 
we have never wasps, but when our fruit beginneth to wax 
ripe. Yet sure I am of this that no one living creature 
corrupteth without the production of another; as we may 
see by ourselves, whose flesh doth alter into lice; and also 
in sheep for excessive numbers of flesh-flies, if they be 
suffered to be unburied. 
Holinshed, “Description of England,” p. 228. 
Fowl. 
Out of the fig-tree there comes such a sharp vapour, 
that if a hen be hanged thereon, it will so prepare her, 
that she will be soon and easily roasted. And the like will 
be if the feathers be plucked off from Fowls and birds, 
and the skins pulled off from beasts, and then laid or 
covered a day or two in a heap of wheat. 
Lupton, “A Thousand Notable Things,” bk. iv. § 19. 
You are now in Lincolnshire, where you can want no 
Fowl, if you can devise means to catch them. 
Lilly, “Galatea,” Act i. Scene 4. 
VY. Bird. 
Fox. 
A Fox hight vulpes, and hath that name as it were 
wallowing feet aside [uneven-legged : see below], and goeth 
never forthright, but alway aslant, and with fraud. And: 
is a false beast and deceivable ; for when him lacketh meat, 
he feigneth himself dead, and then fowls come to him, as 
it were to a carrion, and anon he catcheth one and de- 
