Paradoxographus Palatinus

1 When an eagle is sick, it eats a tortoise and is cured; it drinks the blood.

2 Owls, when they want to keep ants away from their young, put a heart of a bat in their nest, since ants would also wish to leave their lairs if someone were to put a bat’s heart upon them.

3 The jaundice-bird [ikteros] is a creature named for its colour: if someone suffering from the ailment of the same name sees it, they escape the disease at once.

4 Male ravens do not mate with females until they croak a certain song to them like a wedding-ode: thus persuaded, they mate.

5 If someone drinks the water of the spring in Cleitor, he turns away from it and hates drinking wine.

6 In Kanninoi, craters give forth liquid pitch: in the summer season, the morning dew is like pitch. 

7[1] In Naxos, Aglaosthenes says, wine spouts up from the earth of its own accord and though carried through a river, is not mix with its water. [2] Whoever tastes it goes out of their mind.

8 In †Pernikos† stones are found when the earth is dug up, which turn to coal when the sun heats them, so that the people there even boil meat and other such things, placing pots on them.

9[1] In the city of Selasphoros, a stream issues forth cold and clear, having the appearance of olive oil, which makes the body and hair soft and stops headache. [2] If one brings a lighted taper to it, the water is ignited from it and sends up sparks, until it comes near to another [source of] water. This water is more transparent than other waters and free of any odour.

10 Aristotle says that in the Celtic lands two ravens always appear, which actually prophesy to humans in the following fashion: those who are in conflict over some contract come to the aforementioned place and put barley-cakes they have made on certain roosting-perches; the ravens grind the cake of the wrongdoer with their feet but eat that of the just one.

11 Artemidorus says that in Lipara sand-fish [lit. “dug-up fish”] are found, and that the people there use the fish dug up unstintingly as snacks.

12[1] Andronicus says that in Hispania in a certain place, small stones are found thrown about which have grown of themselves into polygons, some white, some wax-coloured, some of which even conceive little stones similar to themselves. In fact, I had one of these myself for the purpose of putting this to trial, which indeed gave birth while in my possession, so that the saying is not false. [2] There is in addition a stream in Hispania which has sweet and drinkable water: if anyone puts his hands into the water and leaves them for a short while, he finds white salt congealed on his hands.

13 Timaeus says that the river Crathis in Italy bleaches the hair of those who wash in it.

14 In Selasphoros a plant is found which those there use in spring as a purge of yellow bile; in autumn, of black bile; and in winter, of phlegm: it brings out each of these one by one unmixed with any of the others.

15 Callimachus says that there are two rivers in Thrace called Keron and Neleus. And when the sheep are around the time of conception, those who drink from the Keron give birth to black lambs; those who [drink] from the Neleus, white; and those [drinking] from both waters, parti-coloured.

16 Polycleitus says that there is a river Liparis in Soli, which actually oils those who wash in it so that they do not need ointment.

17 The same [author] says that the river Monabis in Pamphylia petrifies padding thrown into it.

18 Athenaeus says that in Persia there is a certain tree that bears deadly fruit which the Persians, when Cambyses campaigned against Egypt, brought to Egypt and grew in many places so that they Egyptians when they partook of it would die. But the tree, on changing land, bore harmless fruit, and is called “Persaia” because it was planted by the Persians.

19[1] Theopompus says that in the region of Agriean Thrace there is a river called Pontus, which carries down stones like charcoal: though when lit they will not burn when blown on by small bellows, when they are sprinkled with water, they flare up. [2] No creeping animal can abide their smell.

20 Concerning <the guts> of sheep, Antigonus says that those of rams give no sound, while those of ewes do sound; and that this has not passed undetected by the Poet, for he says:

He stretched seven strings of the female [sheep]

21 Cato says, in his Origines, that white hares occur in the Alps and mice weighing eleven pounds, and single-hoofed pigs and shaggy dogs and hornless cattle.