to overtake
their fellows. With us, where I dwell, they are not kept in this sort,
nor in many other places, neither are they kept so much for their
bodies as their feathers. Some hold furthermore an opinion that in
over rank soils their dung doth so qualify the batableness of the soil
that their cattle is thereby kept from the garget, and sundry other
diseases, although some of them come to their ends now and then by
licking up of their feathers. I might here make mention of other fowls
produced by the industry of man, as between the pheasant cock and
dunghill hen, or between the pheasant and the ringdove, the peacock
and the turkey hen, the partridge and the pigeon; but, sith I have no
more knowledge of these than what I have gotten by mine ear, I will
not meddle with them. Yet Cardan, speaking of the second sort, doth
affirm it to be a fowl of excellent beauty. I would likewise intreat
of other fowls which we repute unclean, as ravens, crows, pies,
choughs, rooks, kites, jays, ringtails, starlings, woodspikes,
woodnaws, etc.; but, sith they abound in all countries, though
peradventure most of all in England (by reason of our negligence), I
shall not need to spend any time in the rehearsal of them. Neither are
our crows and choughs cherished of purpose to catch up the worms that
breed in our soils (as Polydor supposeth), sith there are no uplandish
towns but have (or should have) nets of their own in store to catch
them withal. Sundry acts of Parliament are likewise made for their
utter destruction, as also the spoil of other ravenous fowls hurtful
to poultry, conies, lambs, and kids, whose valuation of reward to him
that killeth them is after the head: a device brought from the Goths,
who had the like ordinance for the destruction of their white crows,
and tale made by the beck, which killed both lambs and pigs. The like
order is taken with us for our vermin as with them also for the
rootage out of their wild beasts, saving that they spared their
greatest bears, especially the white, whose skins are by custom and
privilege reserved to cover those planchers whereupon their priests do
stand at mass, lest he should take some unkind cold in such a long
piece of work: and happy is the man that may provide them for him, for
he shall have pardon enough for that so religious an act, to last if he
will till doomsday do approach, and many thousands after. Nothing
therefore can be more unlikely to be true than that these noisome