Natural Magic

the wine. And thus the ancients were accustomed to making vessels to know and discover the deceptions of vintners. Pliny Roman author and naturalist and those who came after him have taken it from the said Cato, and there is no one in such a long and great succession who has experimented with this; for the contrary is apparent and manifest, and we cannot know what reason or experience led them to do this. Galen Greek physician mocks the fact that everyone has said that the herb commonly called horse-dragee original: "la dragee aux chevaux", when crushed, immediately generates scorpions; for he finely recognized the falsity by placing clay pots in the sun and leaving them there all day. And yet, the said herb, gently crushed and not entirely broken, placed on tiles in a humid place and exposed to the sun, generates and procreates small scorpions, which take growth from day to day, and other scorpions, being attracted by the odor of them, find themselves there. One will not easily believe two great personages and excellent men in our language, Pliny and Albert Albertus Magnus, to have often erred and failed greatly, one of whom, born of noble race, took and transcribed from others the greater part of what he left us in writing. The other, a rustic and a liar, not agreeing with himself in his speech most of the time, does not know what he says, and his babble, in the manner of old women, has put his daydreams into writing, of which he has