Florus — Fulica 75 



Of the Florus from Aristotle. 



The Anthos, that is Florus, feeds on worms ; its 

 size is that of the Fringilla. It gets victual round 

 waters and marshes ; its colour is fair, and its life 

 easy to it. It holds the Horse in hatred, inasmuch 

 as it is driven by the Horse from the grassy pastures 

 where it feeds. It is purblind and nowise keen of 

 eyesight, while it imitates the neighing of the Horse, 

 and flying at it puts the Horse to flight, yet sometimes 

 it is caught and then killed by the Horse. The Florus 

 has so great a hatred of the yEgithus that it is stated 

 that the blood of these two birds, even when dead, 

 cannot be mixed. 



Of the Fulica. 



K67r<^09, fulica, in English a white semaw, with a black 

 cop, in German eyn wyss mewe. 



The later Greeks, who have written after Aristotle, have 

 made the Larus and the Cepphus the same bird, which fact 

 Erasmus in his Proverb Xdpo^ tceir^oii shews, from Aristo- 

 phanes and his interpreter. But Aristotle in the eighth book 

 of his History of Animals keeps the two birds distinct, using 

 the following words: — "There is the Xdpo<; that is white, also 

 the K67r(^o?." Now in what way to reconcile these authors 

 I know not, unless I say that poets who observe more 

 negligently than philosophers the peculiar properties of 

 things, and their diversities, have made these birds the same, 

 which are alike in form of body, breeding-time, and way of 

 feeding, although differing in manifest respects, whereas philo- 

 sophers, more strict than they, gauging all things exactly, 

 have distinguished them as different kinds. 



And yet there is not less diversity of opinion among 

 the critics of our day about the Fulica, and what that bird 

 may be, than there was controversy among the Greeks about 

 its name. For there are teachers of a sort^ in Lower 



1 ' Literatores ' is here apparently used in a somewhat scornful sense. 



