294 
pliny's natural histoet. 
[Book VIII. 
tinue to fight long after its intestines have been dragged out of 
its body. 
When an elephant has happened to devour a chameleon, 
which is of the same colour with the herbage, it counteracts 
this poison by means of the wild olive. Eears, when they 
have eaten of the fruit of the mandrake, lick up numbers of 
ants.^^ The stag counteracts the effect of poisonous plants by 
eating the artichoke. Wood-pigeons, jackdaws, blackbirds, 
and partridges, purge themselves once a year by eating bay 
leaves ; pigeons, turtle-doves, and poultry, with wall-pellitory, 
or helxine ; ducks, geese, and other aquatic birds, with the 
plant sideritis or vervain ; cranes, and birds of a similar nature, 
with the bulrush. The raven, when it has killed a chame- 
leon, a contest in which even the conqueror suffers, counter- 
acts the poison by means of laurel. 
CHAP. 42. (28.) — PEOOi^OSTICS OF PAl^GEE DEKIVED FKOM 
AjSTIMALS. 
There are a thousand other facts of this kind : and the 
same JN'ature has also bestowed upon many animals as well, 
the faculty of observing the heavens, and of presaging the 
winds, rains, and tempests, each in its own peculiar way. It 
would be an endless labour to enumerate them all ; just as 
much as it would be to point out the relation of each to man.^^ 
Eor, in fact, they warn us of danger, not only by their fibres 
and their entrails, to which a large portion of mankind attach 
the greatest faith, but by other kinds of warnings as well. 
When a building is about to fall down, all the mice desert it^^ 
before-hand, and the spiders with their webs are the first to 
drop. Divination from birds has been made a science among 
the Homans, and the college of its priests is looked upon as 
peculiarly sacred.^^ In Thrace, when all parts are covered 
This is again referred to, B. xxix. c. 39. — B. 
19 Quod persequi immensum est aeque scilicet quam reliquam cum 
singuHs hominiim sooietatem." The meaning of this passage is obscure, 
and extremely doubtful. 
20 This is alluded to by Cicero in his letters to Atticus, and is mentioned 
by ^lian, Anim. Nat. B. vi. c. 41 ; B. xi. c. 19 ; and Var. Hist. B. i. 
clL—B. The same is still said of rats, whence our expression "to rat," 
i, e. to desert a falling cause. 
2^ The priests of this college, or augurs, were among the most important 
public functionaries in the Boman state, both from the rank of the indivi- 
