A garland of quotations XXII

Culled from the finest zookeepers in literary history, and re-woven every Monday

To symbolize an unjust and ungrateful man, they depict TWO CLAWS OF AN HIPPOPOTAMUS TURNED DOWNWARDS. For this animal when arrived at its prime of life contends in fight against his father, to try which is the stronger of the two, and should the father give way he assigns him a place of residence, permitting him to live, and consorts himself with his own mother; but if his father should not permit him to hold intercourse with his mother, he kills him, being the stronger and more vigorous of the two. And they make use of the lowest parts of the hippopotamus, the two claws, that men seeing this, and understanding the story of it, may be more inclined to kindness.
•Horapollo, Hieroglyphica (ca. 490).

To show Thou art not bound, as if Thy lot
Were worse then ours; sometimes Thou shiftest hands.
Most things move th’ under-jaw; the Crocodile not.
Most things sleep lying; th’ Elephant leans or stands.
•George Herbert, “Providence” (1633).

I give you now Professor Twist,
A conscientious scientist.
Trustees exclaimed, “He never bungles!”
And sent him off to distant jungles.
Camped on a tropic riverside,
One day he missed his loving bride.
She had, the guide informed him later,
Been eaten by an alligator.
Professor Twist could not but smile.
“You mean,” he said, “a crocodile.”
•Ogden Nash, “The Purist” (1935).

A house-ferret slipped into a blacksmith’s workshop and began to lick the file she found there. Now it happened that using her tongue thus, the blood flowed from it. But she was delighted, imagining that she had extracted something from the iron. And in the end she lost her tongue.
•Æsop.

All deer, however, have living maggots inside their heads: they infest the hollow region under the tongue and near the vertebra to which the head is attached: these maggots are as big as the biggest grubs; they grow in a bunch huddled up together, about twenty of them.
•Aristotle, On Animals (C4 BC).

Just as it is easy to catch a hedgehog but hard to keep hold of it, so with money.
•Aelian, Varia Historia (C3).

Now all the world stares,
How they ride in goodly chairs,
Conveyed by elephants,
With laureate garlands,
And by unicorns
With their seemly horns;
Upon these beats riding,
Naked boys striding,
With wanton wenches winking.
Now truly, to my thinking,
That is a speculation.
•John Skelton, Colyn Cloute (ca. 1522).

A centipede in the fire, swallowing a tiger.
•Ummon, quoted in R.H. Blyth’s Zen and Zen Classics vol. 2 (1964).

A bald man, his eyes streaming with tears, was killing partridges. And one partridge said to another: “Behold the man—how good and saintly he is!” And the other asked: “Why do you call him good?” “Don’t you see,” replied the first, “how he is weeping?”
•Odo of Cheriton, Fabulae (ca. 1225).

If ever you should go by chance
To jungles in the East,
And if there should to you advance
A large and tawny beast—
If he roar at you as you’re dyin’,
You’ll know it is the Asian Lion.

If, when in India loafing round,
A noble wild beast meets you.
With dark stripes on a yellow ground.
Just notice if he eats you.
This simple rule may help you learn
The Bengal Tiger to discern.

When strolling forth, a beast you view
Whose hide with spots is peppered;
As soon as it has leapt on you,
You’ll know it is the Leopard.
’T will do no good to roar with pain.
He’ll only lep and lep again.

If you are sauntering round your yard,
And meet a creature there
Who hugs you very, very hard.
You’ll know it is the Bear.
If you have any doubt, I guess
He’ll give you just one more caress.

Whene’er a quadruped you view
Attached to any tree.
It may be ‘tis the Wanderoo,
Or yet the Chimpanzee.
If right side up it may be both.
If upside down it is the Sloth.

Though to distinguish beasts of prey
A novice might nonplus;
Yet from the Crocodile you may
Tell the Hyena, thus:
’Tis the Hyena if it smile;
If weeping, ’tis the Crocodile.

The true Chameleon is small—
A lizard sort of thing;
He hasn’t any ears at all
And not a single wing.
If there is nothing on the tree
’Tis the Chameleon you see.
•Carolyn Wells, ”How to Know the Wild Animals” (1904).

Sources: Horapollo: trans. Alexander Turner Cory, The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo Nilous (William Pickering, 1860); Aesop: trans. Olivia & Robert Temple, The Complete Fables (Penguin, 1998); Aristotle: trans. A.L. Peck, On Animals I (Loeb) (Harvard UP, 1993); Aelian: trans. N.G. Wilson, Historical Miscellany (Loeb) (Harvard UP, 1997); Odo: trans. Johns C. Jacobs, The Fables of Odo of Cheriton (Syracuse UP, 1985); Wells: Folly for the Wise (Bobbs-Merrill, 1904); some of this material is copyrighted, and I plead only fair use.