MEMOIR OF PLINY. 
65 
not only learn them as a lesson, but they learn them 
with a delight and pleasure, insomuch that a man 
shall find them studying thereupon and conning the 
said lesson. It is said that none of their kinde are 
good to bee made scholars, but such only as feed vp- 
on mast, and among them those that have five toes 
to their feet, and two yeeres of age. And their 
tongue is broader than ordinarie, like as they bee all 
that counterfeit man's voice, each one in their kinde. 
Agripina the empresse, wife to Claudius Caesar, 
had a black birde, or throstle, at what time as I com- 
piled this book, who could counterfeit man’s speech, 
a thing never seen nor knoivn before. The two 
Cajsars, also, the young princes (Germanicus and 
Drusus), had one stare and sundry nightingales 
taught to parle Greeke and Latine. Moreouer, they 
would study vpon their lessons, and meditate all day 
long, and from day to day come out with new words 
still; yea, and were able to continue a long discourse.” 
'W'^e shall close our ornithological extracts with 
an anecdote of “ the wit and vnderstanding” of a 
raven, w'hich attracted the notice and became a spe- 
cial favourite of the Roman people. “ In the dales 
of Tiberius there was a young rauen hatched in a 
nest vpon the church of Castor and Pollux, which to 
make a tiiall how he could flie, took his first flight 
into a shoemaker’s shop, just over against the said 
church. The master of the shop was well enough 
content to receine this bird, as commended to him 
from so sacred a place, and in that regard set great 
VOL. IX. E 
