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THE SECOND BOOKE 177
were many strange shifts, enterchanges, caprings,
and cadences, very hard to be learned. Some have
beene noted to konne and practise their lessons,
using much study and care, as being loath to be
chidden and beaten of their masters. But the tale
of the piot is very strange, which Plutarke confidently
witnesseth to have seene : ' This jay was in a Barbers
shop of Rome, and was admirable in counterfeiting
with her voice whatsoever she heard : It fortuned one
day that certaine Trumpeters stated before this shop
and there sounded a good while; and being gone, all
that day and the next after the piot began to be very
sad, silent, and melancholy, whereat all men marvelled,
and surmized that the noise or clang of the trumpets
had thus affrighted and dizzied her, and that with her
hearing she had also lost her voice. But at last they
found she was but in a deep study and dumpish, retracting
into herself, exercising her minde, and preparing
her voice to represent the sound, and expresse
the noise of the Trumpets she had heard. And the
first voice she uttered was that wherein she perfectly
expressed their straines, their closes, and their changes:
having by her new prentiship altogether quit, and as
it were scorned whatever she could prattle before. I
will not omit to alleage another example of a Dogge,
which Plutarke also saith to have seen (as for any order
or method I know very well I do but confound it, which
I observe no more in ranging these examples than I
doe in all the rest of my business), who being in a ship,
noted that his Dogge was in great perplexity how to
get some Oyle out of a deepe Pitcher, which by reason
of its narrow mouth he could not reach with his tongue,
got him presently some Pibble stones, and put so many
into the jarre that he made the Oyle come up so neare
the brimme as he could easily reach and licke some.
And what is that but the effect of a very subtill spirit ?
It is reported that the ravens of Barbary will doe the
like, when the water they would drinke is too low.
This action doth somewhat resemble that which Iuba,
a King of that Nation, relateth of their Elephants ;
II. N