Amphimachus and Thaos deadly hurt;
Patroclus ta’en or slain; and Palamedes
Sore hurt and bruised: the dreadful sagittary
Appals our number.”
If it be demanded why we do not give a fuller account of these constellations, we may almost remark as the fool does in King Lear (act i. sc. 5, l. 33, vol. viii. p. 295)—“The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven, is a pretty reason.
Lear. Because they are not eight?
Fool. Yes, indeed: thou wouldst make a good fool.”
How soon the American bird, which we name a Turkey, was known in England, is in some degree a subject of conjecture. It has been supposed that its introduction into this country is to be ascribed to Sebastian Cabot, who died in 1557, and that the year 1528 is the exact time; but if so, it is strange that the bird in question should not have been called by some other name than that which indicates a European or an Asiatic origin. Coq d’Inde, or Poule d’Inde, Gallo d’India, or Gallina d’India, the French and Italian names, point out the direct American origin, as far as France and Italy are concerned; for we must remember that the term India, at the early period of Spanish discovery, was applied to the western world. But most probably the Turkey fleet brought the bird into England, by way of Cadiz and Lisbon, and hence the name; and hence also the reasonableness of supposing that its permanent introduction into this country was not so early as the time of Cabot. A general knowledge of the bird was at any rate spread abroad in Europe soon after the middle of the sixteenth century, for we find it figured in the Emblem-books; one of which, Freitag’s Mythologia Ethica, in 1579, p. 237, furnishes a most lively and exact representation to illustrate “the violated right of hospitality.”[[155]]
Ius hoſpitalitatis violatum.