in Pliny
or described in the bestiaries of the Middle Ages. His knowledge of
zoology resembles that of Richard de Fournival, who, in the thirteenth
century, lamented in his "Bestiaire d'Amour,"[71] that he was like the
wolf, who, when instead of first noticing the man, allowed the man to
see him first, lost all his courage; or like the cricket who loves
chirping so much that he forgets to eat and allows himself to be caught.
Richard was overcome in like manner by the glances of his mistress, and
all his songs only served to accomplish his ruin. The woman he loves
resembles the bird called "Kalander," or again, the animal called
"cockatrice" or "cocodrille," which is often mentioned by Lyly. "Its
nature is such that when it finds a man, then it devours him, and when
it has devoured him, then it laments him all the days of its life."[72]
Such is the conduct, says Richard, of women too beautiful and too much
beloved.

[Illustration: THE "AEGYPTIAN OR LAND CROCODILE," 1608.]

Bestiaries had enjoyed an immense popularity from the earliest times.
They were not all, far from it, like Richard de Fournival's,
love-bestiaries; most of them had a religious tendency. Such were, for
example, in England, the well-known Anglo-Saxon bestiary,[73] or the
English bestiary of the thirteenth century, in which we read of the
world-famous wickedness of the whale who allows sailors to rest on her
back, and even to light a fire thereon, in order to warm themselves;
but as soon as she feels the heat she dives and drowns them all: an
example of what may be expected from the devil. There is, too, the
elephant that leans against a tree to take his rest. People cunningly
cut the tree, and replace it; when the elephant comes the tree falls and
so does he, and is caught, an emblem of our father Adam, who also owed
his fall to a tree.[74] Again the "Contes Moralises" of Nicole Bozon,
written in French by a friar who lived in England in the first half of
the fourteenth century, are also full of the most curious comparisons
between the properties of animals, plants, and minerals, and the sinful
tendencies and frailties of mankind.[75]

These are old, far-off examples, and it might be supposed that people of
education in Elizabethan England would have possessed a sounder
knowledge of natural history. This was, however, not the case. And if we
wish to know what were the current beliefs among well-informed men of
the time about animals, we have only to