by Leonardo da Vinci
Available in 350 free installments
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This has no digestive organs, and gets no food but from the fire, in which it constantly renews its scaly skin.
The salamander, which renews its scaly skin in the fire,?for virtue.
This lives on air, and there it is the prey of all the birds; so in order to be safer it flies above the clouds and finds an air so rarefied that it cannot support the bird that follows it.
At that height nothing can go unless it has a gift from Heaven, and that is where the chameleon flies.
1237.
The fish alepo does not live out of water.
This bird converts iron into nourishment, and hatches its eggs by its gaze;?Armies under commanders.
The swan is white without any spot, and it sings sweetly as it dies, its life ending with that song.
This bird, by drinking saltwater purges itself of distempers. If the male finds his mate unfaithful, he abandons her; and when it grows old its young ones brood over it, and feed it till it dies.
1238.
This silences the cuckoo with its song. It dies in oil and revives in vinegar. It sings in the greatest heats
The more light there is the blinder this creature becomes; as those who gaze most at the sun become most dazzled.?For Vice, that cannot remain where Virtue appears.
This bird changes from the female into the male and forgets its former sex; and out of envy it steals the eggs from others and hatches them, but the young ones follow the true mother.
This bird gives sight to its blind young ones by means of celandine.
1239.
This creature, when the moon is full opens itself wide, and when the crab looks in he throws in a piece of rock or seaweed and the oyster cannot close again, whereby it serves for food to that crab. This is what happens to him who opens his mouth to tell his secret. He becomes the prey of the treacherous hearer.
All snakes flie from this creature; but the weasel attacks it by means of rue and kills it.
This carries instantaneous death in its fangs; and, that it may not hear the charmer it stops its ears with its tail.
1240.
This creature entangles itself in the legs of the elephant which falls upon it, and so both die, and in its death it is avenged.
She, in pairing opens her mouth and at last clenches her teeth and kills her husband. Then the young ones, growing within her body rend her open and kill their mother.
Saliva, spit out when fasting will kill a scorpion. This may be likened to abstinence from greediness, which removes and heals the ills which result from that gluttony, and opens the path of virtue.
1241.
This animal catches a man and straightway kills him; after he is dead, it weeps for him with a lamentable voice and many tears. Then, having done lamenting, it cruelly devours him. It is thus with the hypocrite, who, for the smallest matter, has his face bathed with tears, but shows the heart of a tiger and rejoices in his heart at the woes of others, while wearing a pitiful face.
The toad flies from the light of the sun, and if it is held there by force it puffs itself out so much as to hide its head below and shield itself from the rays. Thus does the foe of clear and radiant virtue, who can only be constrainedly brought to face it with puffed up courage.
1242.
The caterpillar, which by means of assiduous care is able to weave round itself a new dwelling place with marvellous artifice and fine workmanship, comes out of it afterwards with painted and lovely wings, with which it rises towards Heaven.
The spider brings forth out of herself the delicate and ingenious web, which makes her a return by the prey it takes.
