Bridgeton pioneer., 1885-12-03
ERRORS NOT VULGAR.

Sir L. Browne wrote about 'vuloar
errors" as he called them; but the
errors respecting the animal and veg
etable worlds which were current all
through the middle ages were Just the
reverse ofvulgar-they were scholarly.
They came of the habit, against which
Lord Bacon was never tired of crying
out, of accepting things on authority.
If Aristotle or Pliny had said it, it
must be true; and so monk after monk
copied it out and put it in his treatise,
though to test it would have been TO
retute it, and the means of testing
were close at hand. This method of
taking things on trust was the bane of
the old philosophy.
Get Hollands translation of the
worthy Pliny if you want an afternoons
amusement. He will tell you that if
you cut off the tip of a dogs tail with
in forty days from its birth, it will
never go mad, and that the best of
the litter is the whelp which gets its
eyesight last, or that which the mother
carries first into her kennel OF the
dogs faithfulness he has notable in
stances. 1t has been known to throw
itself into the flames when its masters
funeral-pyre was kindled. 1t will
breed with the tiger. The Indians
cross their dogs'in that way. The first
and second crosses are too savage; the
third can be trained. No matter how
fierce dog is, it will never attack you
If you sit doWn-Homer says the same
thing in the Odyssey-and it may be
silenced by holding to it brand
snatched from funeral-pyre. When
cremation was given up, this recipe
had to be modified; and for the brand
was substituted 1.-The hand of glory"
which credulous medieval burglars
used to carry, with the view of keep
ing the Watchdog quiet. The most
fighting breed was the Molossan, Il
splendid sample of which the king of
Albania gave to Alexander the Great
ander had boars, stags, and bears
slipped to it, but the dog lay notion
less; whereat the kings anger was
reused that such noble form should
cover SO sluggish q spirit, and he bade
the dog be killed, sending Il message
to the giyer that the gift had proved
unworthy of them both. Whereupon
another like dog was sent, with the
warning that the first dogs inaction in
presence of small game was not due to
sluggishness, but to contempt, such
dogs being used to be matched against
elephants andlions. Alexanderat once
tried him with q lion, which he slew,
and then set him at an elephant, round
which he circled, baying loudly, and
with all his bristles erect, slipping in
and avoiding the elephants stroke
whenever he got the chance. At last
the elephant grew dizzy, and. falling
down, was made q prey by its small
sized antagonist. Unlike bees, and
rats, and cows, and several other
Notwithstanding pheasants. which
Norfolk poachers catch with peas
stepped in brandy-dogs can never be
got to drink anything stronger than
water, at least so Pliny says Hence
the Roman nickname, ''prandium cani-
mum" Ga dogs lunch) for teetotal
banquet.
Strangely enough, about elephants
Pliny is a good deal nearer the truth
than he is about dogs. Borrowing
from Aristotle, he explains just as
accurately how they are caught and
tanned as if he was globe-trotter, re-
turned from Ceylon. He is right too,
in telling how certain natives wait up
q tree till the last of the herd is pass
ing under. On this they drop and
seizing its tail in their left hand, use
the other hand in m-stringing it.
He records the story of the Roman
soldier who cut off the trunk of one of
Pyrrhus' elephants, and so saved the
legion from going down the third time
before the Macedonian phalanx; and
he tells, too, how Hannibal offered a
Roman prisoner his life if he could
beat an elephant in single fight, though
| hope he is wrong in adding that the
Punic general sent horsemen to way
lay the man when, after coming off
victorious, he had been set at liberty.
He is certainly wrong in saying that
African elephants assembling in troops
of fours and fives, and interlacng Iccs
and trunks, commit themselves TO the
waves and float over to the finer
pasture of Arabia; though not more
wrong than Aristotle, who SAYS that
the elephant can not swim, but walks
across deep rivers breathing through
its uplifted trunk. A scholarly error
about elephants was that of the vicar
of Ottery St. Mary, father of Coleridge
the poet, who took the mammoths'
bones, so often found in the south of
England, to belong to elephants
brought over by the Romans, quoting
''Poly@mus Stratagems' to the effect
that Caesar used one when forcing the
passage of the Thames. ''He does not
mention it in his Commentaries,
thinking it would detract from the
honor Of his victories" 1t is remark
able, by the way, that an elephants
head and trunk are sculptured on one
Of the capitals in Ottery ST. Mary's
church. One is glad to learn from
Cicero that when Pompey had twenty
elephants hunted to death in the circus
to delight the people, the feeling
reused was not delight, but pity; ''the
spectators thought that there was q
kinsmp to man in the sagacious
creatures.
Pliny, who says that "wild rose
leaves, reduced to liniment with
bears grease, doth wonderfully make