Marocco. 
Ill 
painefull tutor brought him to do all his trickes: and they are no 
whitte more extraordinary, then a fawkeners manning of a hawke, and 
trayning her to kill partridges, and to fly at the retrive.” (A Treatise 
of Bodies , p. 321, ed. 1644.) 
Marocco’s feats were apparently outdone in other coun¬ 
tries. George Sandys, an Eastern traveller, during his 
residence in Cairo, seems to have been amused at the 
number and variety of performing animals in that city : 
dancing camels, talking ravens, learned dogs, and goats 
were exhibited. “ Asses they will teach to doe such 
tricks, as if possessed with reason: to whom Bankes his 
horse would have proved but a zany ” ( Purchas , vol. ii. 
p. 907). 
The earliest notice of Marocco’s popularity occurs in 
a manuscript copy of one of Dr. Donne’s satires, dated 
1593, preserved in the Harleian manuscript, No. 5110. 
The best account of Bankes and his horse, says Mr. 
Douce, is to be found in the notes to a French transla¬ 
tion of Apuleius’s Golden Ass, by Jean de Montivard, 
1602. 
The Ass is a native of hot countries; and though it 
has been in a measure acclimatized in Eng¬ 
land, the breed has degenerated in the trans¬ 
ference. This animal does not appear to have been 
common in the time of Elizabeth. Nicander Nucius 
notes, in his travels in England in the reign of Henry 
VIII., that this country is deficient in the breed of asses 
and mules. 
Batman derives the name ass from sedendo , sitting, as 
it were a beast to sit on ; for men sat and rode upon 
asses before they used horses to ride upon. Or, he 
suggests, this name asinus may come from a , not 
having, and synos, wit, as it were a beast without wit. 
Quoting Aristotle, Batman further states that as the ass 
feeds among thorns and briars he excites the enmity 
of the small birds that build in bushes. His habit of 
