Caprimulgus — Carduelis 51 



birds ; so that he had once had six she-goats blinded 

 by Caprimulgi, but that one and all they now had flown 

 away from Switzerland to Lower Germany, where nowadays 

 they did not only steal the milk of she-goats, making them go 

 blind, but killed the sheep besides. And, on my asking the 

 bird's name, he said that it was called the Paphus, otherwise 

 the Priest. But possibly that aged man was jesting with 

 me. Yet whether he was jesting, or spoke gravely, still 

 I have no other German name than what he gave to me for 

 Caprimulgus. If there be any then who have in readiness 

 a better or a fitter name than this, let them produce it. 



Of the Carduelis. 



The Carduelis, if we believe Gaza, is in Greek called 

 Opavirk. Aristotle also numbers it among small thistle- 

 eaters^ I find in Aristotle nothing more than this about 

 the Carduelis. Pliny writes that Cardueles, smallest of all 

 birds, perform set tasks, and not in song alone, but with their 

 feet and beak in place of hands. 



Besides that thistle-eating little bird^ adorned with band 

 of gold I know another thistle-eating sort, in colour .green ^ 

 which with its beak takes up its food from one of two small 

 buckets moving up and down alternately, its water from 

 the other, as the Aurivittis does. The Miliaria moreover 

 does the same, which bird our countrymen call Linot. 

 Furthermore it mimics with its song a man when singing 

 anything. And so it is not only that one kind, in Greek 

 called dpav7ri<: and in Latin named by Theodorus^ Carduelis 

 that performs the tasks that it is bid, and uses beak and 

 feet in place of hands. 



It seems to me then difficult to say, since all three birds 

 feed upon thistle-seeds, which of them Pliny meant by 

 Carduelis, whether it should be the Thraupis, or the Acanthis, 

 or the Chrysomitris. And should it be the Thraupis, as 



1 See p. 35. 



2 The Aurivittis, p. 35. 



2 Probably Turner means the Siskin {Carduelis spinus). 

 * Theodorus Gaza. 



4—2 



