nal relations with either
England or Scotland, or the people thereof; and, but for his subsequent
visit, he would not have been able to set down in the pages of his second
book so many interesting and suggestive notes of what he had seen and
heard, and his ideas of the politics of the time. Again, if he had not
been urged by the desire all men feel to read what others may have to say
about places they have visited, it is not likely that he would have
searched the volumes of Hector Boethius and other early writers for
legends and stories of our island. Writing of Britain[124] in the _De
Subtilitate_ he had praised its delicate wool and its freedom from
poisonous beasts: a land where the wolf had been exterminated, and where
the sheep might roam unvexed by any beast more formidable than the fox.
The inordinate breeding of rooks seems even in those days[125] to have led
to a war of extermination against them, carried on upon a system akin to
that which was waged against the sparrow in the memory of men yet living.
But besides this one, he records, in the _De Subtilitate_, few facts
concerning Britain. He quotes the instances of Duns Scotus and Suisset in
support of the view that the barbarians are equal to the Italians in
intellect,[126] and he likewise notices the use of a fertilizing
earth--presumably marl--in agriculture,[127] and the longevity of the
people, some of whom have reached their hundred and twentieth year.[128]
The first notice of us in the _De Varietate_ is in praise of our forestry,
forasmuch as he remarked that the plane tree, which is almost unknown in
Italy through neglect, thrives well in Scotland, he himself having seen
specimens over thirty feet high growing in the garden of the Augustinian
convent near Edinburgh. The lack of fruit in England he attributes rather
to the violence of the wind than to the cold; but, in spite of our cruel
skies, he was able to eat ripe plums in September, in a district close to
the Scottish border. He bewails the absence of olives and nuts, and
recommends the erection of garden-walls in order to help on the
cultivation of the more delicate fruits.

In a conversation with the Archbishop of St. Andrews he was told that the
King of Scots ruled over one hundred and sixty-one islands, that the
people of the Shetland Islands lived for the most part on fish prepared by
freezing or sun-drying or fire, and had no other wealth than the skins of
beasts. Cardan pictures the Shetlande