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Above this glowing mass of colour some three or four feathers of a pheasant’s tail are stuck, apparently with no ulterior purpose than that of ornament; but beside the bunch of ribbands there is also fixed a piece of wolf’s skin, to give strength to the jaded animal, for, remarks the sapient Pliny, “a wolf’s skin attached to a horse’s neck will render him proof against all weariness.” Personally, we should think a little more consideration and some elementary knowledge of farriery would have been of more service to the ill-used beasts round Naples than the excellent Pliny’s highly original receipt.
Meanwhile the Younger Pliny, who had declined to accompany his uncle’s expedition on the plea of having to pursue the studies with which as a hard-working youth of seventeen he was evidently engrossed, became alarmed during the night for the Elder Pliny’s safety.
Accordingly, such assertions, when made by credible persons, and of unexplored places, are not disbelieved, but at most regarded as requiring confirmation from subsequent observers; unless the alleged properties of the supposed new Kind are at variance with known properties of some larger kind which includes it; or, in other words, unless, in the new Kind which is asserted to exist, some properties are said to have been found disjoined from others which have always been known to accompany them; as in the case of Pliny’s men, or any other kind of animal of a structure different from that which has always been found to co-exist with animal life.
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