OUSEL. | NATURAL HISTORY. DAY 
Ounce. 
Mipvsummer Nicut’s Dream, ii. 3. 
Some have said when a man or beast is bitten with an 
Ounce, presently mice flock unto him, and poison him with 
their urine: The gall of this beast is deadly poison ; it 
hateth all creatures, and destroyeth them. 
Topsell, *‘Four-footed Beasts,” s.v. 
Tue Ounce does not eat its prey, until it has hung it 
up on high, but when it comes to a tree, it carries its pre 
to the topmost branch, and eats it hanging. [Then follows 
the above curious statement about the Ounce-bite and the 
mice, with a story of a man bitten by an Ounce, “ who had 
himself carried out to sea in a bark,” and so baffled the 
mice. | Hortus Sanitatis, bk. ii. § 158. 
Ousel. 
Mrupsummer Nicat’s Dream, ili. I, 128. 
Tue Ousel or blackbird is white in Achaia. The Ousel 
purges disgust to meat annually with laurel-leaves. The 
Ousel changes its colour from black to russet, sings in 
the summer, stutters in winter, changes about the solstice 
its bill, which is transformed into ivory in year-old cocks. 
The tame Ousel eats flesh against nature. The Ousel like 
other birds does not shed its plumage, but changes its bill 
to a white colour every year. And in the winter for 
fatness it can scarcely fly. 
Lbid., bk. iii, § 74, 
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Ir the feathers of the right wing of an Ousel be hung 
up on a red thread, which has never been used, in the 
middle of a house, no one will be able to sleep in that 
house, until the wing has been taken down. And if its 
heart be put under the head of a sleeper, and he be ques- 
tioned, he will tell with a loud voice all that he has done. 
And again if it be put in well-water with the blood of a 
hoopoo, and mixed together, and then rubbed on the 
temples of any man, he grows weak even to death. 
Albertus Magnus, ‘‘Of the Virtues of Animals.” 
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