A certain learned physician, named Peter Belon, a native of the town
of Le Mans, the capital of what was then the province of Maine, but is
now the department of the river Sarthe, in France, bethought him that
very little was known in his native country at the time he lived--the
middle of the sixteenth century--of Natural History; and, being moved
by the example of Aristotle (at the trifling distance of nearly
nineteen hundred years) he resolved, having been a great traveller
and eke a great observer (two persons not always united) to give his
fellow-citizens and the world, the benefit of his experience and
opportunities, and take away the reproach which lay like a shadow over
the land.
Prepared by much study for the cultivation of his favourite pursuits,
he left France in the year fifteen hundred and forty-seven, being
at that time twenty-nine years of age, and travelled successively
through Germany, Bohemia, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Palestine, and Asia
Minor, returning to Paris after three years absence with a large
and valuable collection of plants and specimens of natural history,
which he then occupied himself in arranging, preparatory to the
publication of the knowledge he had acquired. The first work which
he produced was a history of strange fishes and serpents, under the
title “De Aquatilibus;” but, tempting as the subject is, I do not at
present intend to examine it, having another of his productions before
me, which (from the fact of its being a borrowed book, and liable,
therefore, to sudden seizure by its owner, who otherwise would never
get it back), more immediately claims my attention.
This coveted volume is the celebrated History of the Nature of Birds,
with their descriptions and lively portraits, taken from Nature, and
written in seven books, and is, perhaps, the principal work on which
is founded Peter Belon’s claim to be considered the father of modern
natural history. In the preface to it he promises--and he keeps his
word far better than might have been expected--that nothing shall
appear in these books which is not perfectly true; there shall be no
false descriptions or portraits of suppositious animals; nothing,
in short, that is not to be found in nature. Appropriate to the
publication of a work on ornithology, Peter Belon caused this volume
to be printed, in the year fifteen hundred and fifty-five, by William
Cavellat, in front of the college of Cambray, in Paris, at the sign
of the Fat Hen (a sure sign that Peter Belon came from Le Mans, a
city famous for its poultry); and that there should be no doubt of
the latter fact, the title-page also bore the living portraiture of
a domestic fowl in very high condition, enclosed within a circle, on
the outer rim of which was inscribed the legend “Gallina in pingui,”
an inscription that need not again be translated. A portrait of Peter
Belon, as he appeared to the justly-admiring world, at the age of
thirty-six, also embellished the volume. The learned physician appears
to have been a man with a good, sensible, honest countenance, wearing a
large Crimean beard, and having a cap on his head, the shape of which,
fortunately, has not yet been adopted for the British army.
Like most other old authors, Peter Belon takes some time before he can
get fairly under weigh. There are, first, the dedication to the most
Christian king--Henry the Second of the name--whose humble scholar the
author declares himself to be. Then follows a homily addressed to the
reader, chiefly for the purpose of assuring him that, in the lively
portraits of the birds which he presents (Ah, could we but reproduce
some of them!), he is not practising on his credulity, but that, such
as he represents them, the fowls are themselves, and that, where he
cannot get an authentic likeness he has refused to invent one.
The royal privilege to publish, sealed with yellow wax--like a bottle
of good old wine--comes next, and finally appear several copies of
verses in praise of the author, by certain of his friends, which
latter had better be skipped, that Peter Belon’s volume, which has in
it a great deal that is worth reading, may unfold its pages for our
gratification. It is not, however, a resumé of the work, or anything
like it, that I intend to make, but simply a dip into it--here and
there--extending some of the quaint fancies, curious digressions, and
sound opinions with which it is interspersed, always desiring our
reader to bear in mind that the author was a physician as well as a
naturalist.
A word or two, before he fairly enters on his theme, may be allowed
him to describe the pains he was in the habit of taking to obtain
correct information. “It was my custom,” he says, “during my sojourn
in Padua, to go down the Brenta every Thursday evening, voyaging
all night in order to reach Venice on Friday morning, and to remain
there on Saturday and Sunday, as much for the convenience of seeing
birds as well as fishes; and after having conferred with fowlers and
fishermen, to return from thence on Sunday evening, thus losing no time
by taking the night-boat, and being ready to continue my studies on
Monday morning. During which time, on the aforesaid days of Friday and
Saturday, there was not a single fowler or fisherman who did not bring
to show me every rare creature he had been able to procure.”
Commencing, then, “ab ovo,” Peter Belon discusses the properties of
eggs; but into the processes of fecundation and hatching which he
describes, I do not propose to enter, the gastronomic view of the
question presenting more novelty. After apologising for the puerility
of the subject, he tells us that in his time the French way of eating
eggs (they have six hundred and eighty-five ways now, if the Almanach
des Gourmands speaks sooth) was by breaking them at the small end
and carefully replacing the shell when emptied into the platter;
while the Germans, on the other hand--reminding us of Blefuscu and
Lilliput--opened their eggs at the side and finished by smashing the
shell; in which latter practice, says Belon, they followed the example
of the ancients, who held it a thing of evil augury to leave the shells
unbroken. Belon then proceeds to discourse on the numerous varieties
of eggs, considering those of pigeons, ostriches, pea-hens, geese, and
swans are ill-flavoured and indigestible,--not objecting to the eggs of
the tortoise or turtle,--but giving the preference, like a person of
taste, to those of the domestic fowl, which, he says, “are supposed by
many in France to assist greatly in prolonging life;” and he instances
the case of Pope Paul the Third, who used, with that end in view, to
eat two new-laid eggs for breakfast every morning. As to their shape,
he remarks that long eggs are supposed to be much better eating than
round ones; but without insisting on this point, he has no hesitation
in declaring that all are highly invigorating, as truffles are, and
artichokes, and raw oysters. Artichokes, indeed, were so much esteemed
in Belon’s time, that “no great nobleman feeling himself unwell would
finish his dinner without them,”--eating them by way of dessert. Belon
objects to hard boiled eggs, or such as are too much fried, “on account
of their engendering bad humours,” but upon poached eggs (œufs pochéz)
he looks with considerable favour. In all cases he prefers plain boiled
eggs (time--three minutes and a quarter) to those which are roasted;
notwithstanding the well-known proverb: “There’s wisdom in the roasting
of eggs.” The best way of preserving eggs, he says, is to keep them in
a cool place, bury them in salt, or dip them in brine.
As the chicken issues naturally from the egg, so dining upon the one is
the regular sequence to breakfasting on the other. The younger your
pullet, says Belon, the easier it is of digestion, though he allows you
occasionally to eat an elderly male bird, when prescribed medicinally
(hormis le coq, qui est souvêt pris pour medicine). “Roasted or grilled
fowls are generally the most savoury; those which are boiled furnish
more humid nourishment to the body. The first are eaten hot, the last
cold.” This rule, however, does not, he tells us, always hold good:
“Because, if any one writing on the quality of the flesh of birds,
happened to be in a country where the people fed on a particular
kind not eaten elsewhere, and a male bird already old and tough were
offered him (avenait qu’on luy presentast de quelque oyseau des-ia viel
et endurcy), he ought not to conclude that its flesh is necessarily
fibrous and hard.” With all respect for the opinion of honest Peter
Belon, I should be inclined to think that a tough old cock, whatever
his nation, was somewhat difficult of digestion. I have a very vivid
recollection of a fowl of this sort at a certain hotel in Abbeville,
where nothing else was to be had for dinner, which the waiter assured
me was not to be surpassed in tenderness; a quality he might have
displayed towards his family when alive, but which certainly did not
belong to him after he was roasted. It is, perhaps, on the tolerant
principle of respecting other people’s prejudices (I can account for
Belon’s conclusion no other way), that he does not exclude even birds
of prey from good men’s feasts. “We know by experience,” he observes
(not his own experience, I hope), “what has taken place in Crete, where
the young ones of the vulture which have fallen from their rocky nests
near Voulèsmeni, have been proved at least as good eating as a fine
capon. And although some of the inhabitants (the greater part, I should
imagine) think that the old birds are not good to eat, because they
feed on carrion, the fact is otherwise; for good falconers say that
the hawk, vulture, and falcon are excellent meat, and being roasted
or boiled, like poultry, are found to be well-tasted and tender.
(Fancy a tender vulture!) We constantly see, if any of these birds
kill themselves, or break a limb in hunting game, that the falconers
do not hesitate to dress them for the table.” In Auvergne, he adds,
the peasants of the Limagne, and in the mountains, too, eat the flesh
of the goivan, a species of eagle; so that it may be concluded that
birds of prey, whether old or young, are tender,--an inference which I
presume to doubt. One saving clause Peter Belon has, which has at all
times done good service. If people generally are not in the habit of
eating kites, owls, and so forth, there are some who do: “tastes merely
differ”--(les appetits des hommes ne se ressemblent en aucune manière).
The transition is easy from these delicacies to other less questionable
birds, and the manner of preparing them for the pot or spit; and
brings Peter Belon to what he evidently likes--a good dinner in a
general way. “You may talk,” he says, “of Spaniards, Portuguese,
English, Flemings, Italians, Hungarians, or Germans, but none of them,
in dinner-giving, come up to the French. The latter begin with meats
disguised a thousand ways (mille petits desguisements de chair); and
this first entry, as it is called, consists of what is soft and liquid,
and ought to be sent in hot, such as soups, fricassees, hashes, and
salads”! (Hot salads are a rarity now-a-days). The second course is
roast and boiled, of different kinds of meat, as well of birds as of
terrestrial animals, “it being well understood that no fish is eaten
except on fast-days.” The dinner ends with “cold things, such as
fruits, preparations of milk and sweets.” This is the outline of a
dinner only; but when Peter Belon enters into a detailed bill of fare,
the newspaper report of a Lord Mayor’s dinner pales beside it. A few
of the names of these dishes--as well as they can be translated--are
worth preserving. What do you think of pilgrim capons--lions--made
of the white meat of pullets; wild boar venison with chestnuts;
diamond-pointed jelly; goslings dressed with malvoisie; feet (whose
feet?) with infernal sauce (pieds à la saulce d’enfer); counterfeit
sea-hog; laurelled quails; partridges with capers; veal sausages; hop
salad; chestnut butterflies; golden-backed woodcock pasties; ox-heel
pasties; plumed peacocks; tipsy cake (gasteaux joyeux); little cabbages
all hot (petits chouy tous chaulds); and, amongst other varieties,
pomegranate salad?
In treating of the uses to which birds have been applied, Peter
Belon does not omit divination. It is pretty clear, however, that
he has no faith in the auruspices, though he lets them down gently.
“These soothsayers exercised their mystery in the contemplation of
the inward parts as well of birds as of other animals, when offered
up for sacrifice. The question must then be asked, whether, by this
inspection, they really could foretell the things that were to come,
and if there were any probability, what they promised turning out true?
There can be little doubt that this system of divination had a very
simple origin, beginning by cajoling private persons, and promising
them what they desired (which is the greatest pleasure men can
receive), and afterwards, by investing it with a religious character,
and turning the same to their own profit.” The French soldiers, in
Belon’s time, imitated the Romans so far as to carry the sacred cock
with their baggage when they took the field; but it was for a very
intelligible species of augury,--to know, by his crowing, when the day
was about to break. Belon had much too good sense to credit either the
superstitions of the Romans or those of his own day, and was probably
only restrained by his fear of the Church, from expressing his opinions
too plainly. Passing from divination to sorcery, he says: “Every
contemplative man must have had reason to despise the ignorant people
who believe that sorcerers have the power attributed to them. We have
seen many condemned to death; but all have been either poor idiots or
madmen. Now, of two things, one must happen: that if they do mischief,
it must either be by the employment of some venomous drug put into
the mouth, or otherwise applied, or by invocations. It is not often
that one hears of people of quality being accused of sorcery--only the
poorer sort; and to tell the truth, no man of judgment would apply
his mind to such absurdities. To prevent the common people from doing
so, it is the custom once a-week to prohibit them formally. It may
easily happen that one of this sort, troubled in his wits, should
fancy incredible things, and even acknowledge to having committed
them; but we must set this down to the nature of their disease.” In
this way sensible Peter Belon disposes of the lycanthropists and other
self-created wizards. On the subject of antipathies, however, he
entertains a belief that it is reasonable; as in the case of the fox
and the stork, which are sworn foes, ever since the practical jokes, I
suppose, which we all know they played on each other.
Being himself a physician, Peter Belon enlarges upon the maladies of
birds; but he tells us that, with the exception of falcons, which are
more especially under the care of man, they are their own doctors.
“The pelican, which builds its nest on the ground, finding its young
stung by a serpent, weeps bitterly, and piercing its own breast, gives
its own blood to cure them.” (This is a new reading of the old story).
“Quails, when they are indisposed, swallow the seeds of hellebore;
and starlings take hemlock. The herb chélidoine (celandine, from the
Greek kelidon, a swallow) derives its name from the fact that the
swallow administers the juice of the plant to her young. The stork
physics himself with marjoram. Wood pigeons, ravens, blackbirds, jays
and partridges take laurel; while turtle-doves, pigeons, and cocks
prescribe bird-weed. Ducks and geese eat sage.” (Sage enters largely
into the affair, in combination with onions, when ducks and geese are
eaten). “Cranes and herons employ marsh rushes. Thrushes and many
smaller birds swallow the seeds of the ivy--which would be hurtful
diet for man (qui seroit viande mauvaise à l’homme).” Not much worse,
however, than hellebore or hemlock! But it would seem that the eagle
family are exempt from the ordinary ailments of birds; for, in speaking
of the Chrysaëtos, or great royal eagle, Belon tells us: “Eagles never
change their place of abode, but always return to the same nest. It has
thus been observed that they are long-lived. But becoming old, the beak
grows so long that it becomes bent, and prevents the bird from eating,
so that it dies, not of any malady, or extreme old age, but simply
because it cannot make use of its beak.” I fear this is not one of the
facts derived from Belon’s own observation.
Our fashionable ladies have passion for eider-down; but did they ever
hear that the vulture can supply them with an article quite as soft?
“Their skin,” says our author, “is almost as thick as that of a kid,
and under the throat is a spot about the breadth of a palm, where the
feathers are reddish, like the hair of a calf; and these feathers have
no quills, any more than those on both sides of the neck and under
the wings, where the down is so white that it shines like silk. The
furriers, after removing the large feathers, leave the down, and curry
the skins for mantles, which are worth a sum of money. In France they
use them chiefly to place on the stomach (what we call bosom-friends).
It would scarcely be believed that the vulture’s skin is so stout,
if one had not seen it. Being in Egypt and on the plains of Arabia
Deserta, we have noticed that the vultures are large and numerous, and
the down from a couple of dozen of these would quite suffice for a
large robe. At Cairo, on the Bezestein, where merchandise is exposed
for sale, the traveller may obtain silken dresses lined with the skins
of vultures, both black and white.”
Belon was a great observer of all the birds of prey, and appears to
have taken many notes of their habits while living near the Monts
d’Or, in Auvergne, under the protection of M. Duprat, the Bishop of
Clermont. It was there he learnt the fact about the peasantry eating
the goivan, called also the boudrée, which he thus describes: “There is
not a peasant in the Limagne (a great plain) of Auvergne who does not
know the goivan, and how to capture him with traps baited with frogs,
or with lime, but more commonly with snares. He is taken principally in
the winter, when he is very good to eat, for he is so fat that no other
bird comes near him in that respect. The peasants lard or boil him, and
find his flesh quite as good as that of a hen. This eagle eats rats,
mice, frogs, lizards, snails, caterpillars, and sometimes serpents.”
That there may be no doubt about the last-named viand being food for
eagles, one of Peter Belon’s lively portraitures follows the statement,
in which a goivan is depicted in the act of dining on a serpent,
twisted into a figure of eight (as, well he might be), and a number
of astonished frogs and fishes scurrying away for dear life,--all
save one philosophical member of the tadpole family, who, sitting on
the tumultuous waves of an adjacent ditch, calmly contemplates the
scene. It is observable throughout the plates in Belon’s work that the
smaller quadrupeds endure the infliction of being devoured alive with
far greater resignation than the Reptilia. I have before me at this
moment the portrait of a rabbit, on whose back a buzzard is standing as
if in the act of going to sing, while the long-eared animal on which
he has pounced seems to apprehend his fate no more than if he were a
music-stand. A mouse in the claws of a speckled magpie, puts on, in
another plate, an air of equal indifference.
Amongst the birds of prey known to the French villagers--and to their
cost--is one called by the singular name of White John (Jan le Blanc),
or The Bird of St. Martin,--but why the latter name was bestowed on
it, Belon is at a loss to discover. The first is obvious enough, for
its belly and part of its tail are of spotless white. This fellow is
very daring, and carries off fowls and rabbits from under the eyes of
the owners; he feeds largely, too, upon partridges and all the smaller
birds, so that he is not a Cheap John, at all events. But Belon has
one comfort: White John has a natural antagonist in the Hobby-hawk,
and the way they fight in the air till they tumble entangled to the
ground and are taken, is quite a pleasant thing to see (moult plaisant
à voir). This combat is not depicted; but on the next page there is a
striking delineation of the manner in which a falconer lures a bird
of prey. He does it in this wise: a hawk having caught a partridge,
stands on its back in the air, quietly devouring it, and the cunning
fowler takes this opportunity of approaching with the leg of another
bird in his hand, which he offers on his knees to the hawk, in the
expectation, apparently, that the greedy bird of prey will give up
the whole for a part. Of the share which the falconer’s dog has in
the transaction, I say nothing; because, though in the foreground of
the picture, he is not a quarter the size of the victim partridge. It
must be confessed that Belon’s descriptions are more satisfactory than
the artist’s illustrations. This remark, however, does not apply to
the actual portraits of the birds, which are in most instances very
accurate. Nothing, for instance, can be better done than the Royal
Kite, which some in France call Huo, and others Escoufle. This bird,
being a lover of carrion, is protected; so much so, that “in England a
fine is imposed on those who kill him.” Belon records a pleasant piece
of pastime which this kite affords the infidels:
“The Turks who live at Constantinople take pleasure in throwing lumps
of raw meat into the air, which the kites pounce upon so rapidly that
they seize and carry it off before it can fall to the ground.”
The Venetian nobles amuse themselves differently--not with kites,
but cormorants. When the weather is calm, they go out on the lagoons
in light boots, two or three dozen in company, each boat being rowed
by six men, and pulled very swiftly. Having surrounded the cormorant
(like French huntsmen with a fox, to prevent him from getting away and
giving them a run), he cannot rise in the air (why not?), but dives
under the water, and every time he shows his head above the surface,
the noblemen let fly at him with their cross-bows, till at last he is
thoroughly done up, is half-suffocated, and gives in. “It is a fine
sight to behold this sport (c’est un beau spectacle de voir un tel
deduit), and also is to see a cormorant having caught a tolerably-sized
eel, which he tries to swallow, but has to fight a long time with
it before he can get it down.” The cormorants themselves are, oddly
enough, not thought good eating by the common people, who say of them
that they are “a dish for the devil” (qui voudroit jestoyer le diable,
il luy faudroit doñer de tels oyseaux); but Belon does not think them
so bad as they say (toute fois ne sont si mauvais qu’on crië).
The stork, unfortunately, did not, when Belon flourished, enjoy the
same immunity; for though he admits that the Romans despised them at
table, he says, “now they are looked upon as a royal dish.” He moreover
tells us that the gizzard of a stork is an antidote to poison, and a
remedy against squinting (le gesier de la cigogne est bon contre les
venins et qui en aura mangé ne sera lousche en sa vie)! It appears also
that even the ostrich, which can digest iron, is itself digested by
Libyan gastronomers, who eat the flesh and sell the feathers.
This tendency to discover what birds are most eatable, is manifested
throughout the volume of Peter Belon. Arriving at the noble Alectrion
or Rooster of the United States, he cites the following recipe, from
Dioscorides, for the concoction of cock-broth. “Take a fine strong old
bird, and having properly trussed him, stuff him well with roots of
fern, the seed of chartamus (whatever that may be), salt of mercury,
and soldanella (a purgative sea-weed), and, having sewn him up, boil
him well down.” A potage this, which bears some resemblance to “the
sillakickaby of the ancients,” described in Peregrine Pickle, and, I
should think, nearly as agreeable.
The majority of the birds in Belon’s book are accurately described and
too well-known to afford much opportunity for quoting from what he says
of their forms and habits, but now and then we meet with a rara avis.
Such, for instance is the “Gellinote de bois” (Gelinotte) which, though
still found in the Ardennes, and occasionally a visitor to Monsieurs
Chevet’s shop in the Palais Royal, is rare enough to merit description
at second-hand. What their price may be I know not, but three hundred
years ago they cost two crowns a-piece, and were only seen at the
banquets of princes and the wedding-feasts of great lords. “The
feathers on the back are like those of the woodcock; the breast and
belly white, spotted with black; the neck is like that of a pheasant;
the head and beak resemble a partridge; the tail feathers are black
with white tips, the large wing-feathers variegated like the owl; down
to the feet the legs are feathered like the grouse.” If the gelinotte
combines the flavour as well as the plumage of the birds just mentioned
(omitting the owl) I should say it is worth the price which Monsieur
Chevet puts upon it before he stuffs it with the truffles.
The Vanneau is another bird which, common enough in the marshy
districts of France (particularly in Bourbon Vendée) is, I believe,
unknown in England. It is a wading-bird, and bears some resemblance to
the peacock: hence, its name, corrupted from paonneau to vanneau; but
the peasants call it dinhuit, on account of its cry. It is crested with
five or six long black feathers, and is of changeable hue: in size it
is not much larger than a plover, and is perched on very high red legs.
There is no question about the estimation as a delicacy in which the
vanneau is still held.
Belon has a good deal to say about quails, and the various modes of
catching them. One way is by means of an instrument made of leather
and bone, which, set in motion, utters a sound like the voice of the
female bird, and is called courcaillet, on hearing which the males run
rapidly and are caught in the fowler’s net; but this device is only
effectual during the season of courting. Every one has noticed how
low the quail’s cages are made. Belon says, it is because they are so
given to jumping and excitement that they would destroy themselves were
the cages higher. Of the crested lark (in French, cochevis), he tells
us, on the authority of several writers of antiquity, that when made
into a broth or roasted--like punch--they cure the colic; we all know
what capital pâtés are made of the lark uncrested. We learn that the
woodcock--how admirable is he, too, in a pâté--though called bécasse,
in French, on account of the length of his bill, ought to be designated
“vvitcoc,” that being an English word, which signifies “cock of the
wood,” and corresponds with the Greek term, “xilomita.” Some people,
Belon says, call him Avis cœca (blind bird), because he suffers himself
to be so easily caught, and he gives a sufficiently lively description
of one mode of effecting his capture. It is as follows:--“He who
desires to take the woodcock must put on a cloak and gloves, the
colour of the dead leaves, and conceal his head and shoulders beneath
a (brown) hat, leaving only two small holes to see through. He must
carry in his hands two sticks covered with cloth of the same colour,
about an inch of the ends of which must be of red cloth, and leaning
upon crutches (rather a lame way of proceeding) must advance leisurely
towards the woodcock, stopping when the bird becomes aware of his
approach. When the woodcock moves on he must follow until the bird
stops again without raising its head. The fowler must then strike the
sticks together very quickly (moult bellement) which will so amuse and
absorb the woodcock that its pursuer may take from his girdle a rod,
to which a horsehair noose is attached, and throw the latter round its
neck, for it is one of the stupidest and most foolish birds that are
known.” I should think so, if it allowed itself to be caught by this
tom-foolery.
Of birds which are not stupid, but knavish rather, even to much theft,
Belon relates that the magpie is called Margot (the diminutive of
Margaret, as Charles the First called his beautiful sister, the wife
of Henry of Navarre); and the jay (Richard), each on account of their
cry. Being somewhat skinny, the jay is thought rather a tough morsel
by those who desire to dine upon him; but he himself eats everything
that comes in his way, and is particularly fond of peas--green peas
perhaps--at a guinea a pound. The common people think that the jay is
subject to the falling sickness, nevertheless they eat him when they
find him on the ground. It is, perhaps, a weakness in human nature
which cannot be remedied, the tendency to make a meal of everything
that has animal life. But for this, how severely might we not
animadvert on the gluttony of those who, not remembering their song in
spring, devour thrushes in the autumn: yet, that is the best time to
eat them, for they are then perfectly delicious as you would say, with
me, if you had made a diligence supper on thrushes travelling through
the Ardennes.
But, I fear, if I read any more of Peter Belon’s volume, I shall write
an article on Gastronomy, a thing I had no notion of when I began. Let
me conclude with something more serious than eating--if anything be
more serious: let me lament, with all the world, that so useful a man
as Peter Belon should have been cut off sadly in the prime of his life
and full vigour of his intellect. He was only forty-five years of age
when he was murdered one night as he traversed the Bois de Boulogne on
his way to Paris; whether for the sake of plunder or revenge is not
known.