Natural history, lore and legend : being some few examples of quaint and by-gone beliefs gathered in from divers authorities, ancient and mediaeval, of varying degrees of reliability / by F. Edward Hulme.

Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Natural history, lore and legend : being some few examples of quaint and by-gone beliefs gathered in from divers authorities, ancient and mediaeval, of varying degrees of reliability / by F. Edward Hulme. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    lobster, and they can often change their colour, and by that project devoure other fishes. Their use and custom is to be lurking closely by the sides and roots of rocks, changing themselves into the colour of the same thing unto which they cleave : insomuch that they seem as a part of the rock ; whither when the foolish fish swim they fall into danger, for whilst they dread nothing these polypodes suddenly prey upon them and devoure them. And indeede this is the constancie and unfeared treacherie which is often found in many men, who will be anything for their own ends. And nothing without them : sparing none for their own purposes, nor loving any but to effect them. Their heads, indeed, may well be neare their feet ; for they prize the trash we trample on farre above the joyes of heaven ; else they would never work their fond purposes by deceitfull meanes and damage others to help themselves. Another illustration of the same kind states that although the mole be blinde all her lifetime, yet she beginneth to open her eyes in dying : whiche is a prettie embleme. This serveth to decypher the state of a worldly man, who neither seeth heaven nor thinketh of hell in his lifetime, untill he be dying : and then beginning to feel that which before he either not believed or not regarded, he looketh up and seeth. For even against his will he is then compelled to open his eyes and acknowledge his sinnes, although before he could not see them. We have taken these two passages from the Speculum Mundi, or a Glasse representing the