Q. Why doth a cow give milk more abundantly than other beasts? A. Because she is a great eating beast, and where there is much monthly superfluity engendered, there is much milk; because it is nothing else but that blood purged and tried.
Q. Why is not milk wholesome? A. 1. Because it curdeth in the stomach, whereof an evil breath is bred. 2. Because the milk doth grow sour in the stomach, where evil humours are bred, and infect the breath.
Q. Why is milk bad for such as have the headache? A. Because it is easily turned into great fumosities, and hath much terrestrial substance in it, the which ascending doth cause the headache.
Q. Why is milk fit nutriment for infants? A. Because it is a natural and usual food, and they were nourished by the same in the womb.
Q. Why are the white-meats made of a new-milked cow good? A. Because milk at that time is very spongy, expels many fumosities, and, as it were, purges at that time.
Q. Why do physicians forbid the eating of fish and milk at the same time? A. Because they produce a leprosy, and because they are phlegmatic.
Q. Why have not birds and fish milk and paps? A. Because paps would hinder the flight of birds. And although fish have neither paps nor milk, the females cast much spawn, which the male touches with a small gut, and causes their kind to continue in succession.
Of the Back.
Q. Why have beasts backs? A. 1. Because the back is the way and mien of the body, from which are extended and spread throughout all the sinews of the backbone. 2. Because it should be a guard and defence for the soft parts of the body, as for the stomach, liver, lights and such like. 3. Because it is the foundation of all the bones, as the ribs, fastened to the backbone.
Q. Why hath the backbone so many joints or knots, called spondelia? A. Because the moving and bending it, without such joints, could not be done; and therefore they are wrong who say that elephants have no such joints, for without them they could not move.