If there be two hunters,
one before their eyes sings or plays the pipe, the other keeps out
of sight and shoots, at a signal given by the confederate. If the
animal has its ears cocked, it can hear well and you cannot escape its
ken; if its ears are down, you can.
6
When bears are running away from their pursuers they push their
cubs in front of them, or take them up and carry them; when they are
being overtaken they climb up a tree. When emerging from their
winter-den, they at once take to eating cuckoo-pint, as has been said,
and chew sticks of wood as though they were cutting teeth.
Many other quadrupeds help themselves in clever ways. Wild goats
in Crete are said, when wounded by arrows, to go in search of dittany,
which is supposed to have the property of ejecting arrows in the body.
Dogs, when they are ill, eat some kind of grass and produce
vomiting. The panther, after eating panther's-bane, tries to find some
human excrement, which is said to heal its pain. This panther's-bane
kills lions as well. Hunters hang up human excrement in a vessel
attached to the boughs of a tree, to keep the animal from straying
to any distance; the animal meets its end in leaping up to the
branch and trying to get at the medicine.
Pages:
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502