But that the reproach of over-much credulity may not lie upon Cardan alone, Scaliger, who lay at catch with him to take him tripping wherever he could, cavils not with any thing in the whole narration but the bigness of wings and the littleness of the body; which he undertakes to correct from one of his own which was sent him by Orvesanus from Java. Nay, he confirms what his antagonist has wrote, partly by history and partly by reason; affirming, that himself, in his own garden, found two little birds with membranaceous wings utterly devoid of legs, their form was near to that of a bat’s. Nor is he deterred from the belief of the perpetual flying of the Manucodiata, by the gaping of the feathers of her wings, which seem thereby less fit to sustain her body, but further makes the narration probable by what he has observed in kites hovering in the air, as he saith, for a whole hour together without flapping of her wings, or changing place. And he has found also how she may sleep in the air, from the example of fishes, which he has seen sleeping in the water without sinking themselves to the bottom, and without changing place, but lying stock still, pinnulis tantum nescia quid motiuncule meditantes, only wagging a little their fins, as heedlessly and unconcernedly as horses while they are asleep wag their ears to displace the flies that sit upon them. Wherever Scaliger admitting that the Menucodiata is perpetually on the wing in the air, he must of necessity admit also that manner of incubation that Cardan describes, else how could their generations continue?
Franciscus Hernandeo affirms the same with Cardan expressly in every thing: As also Eusebius Nierembergius, who is so taken with the story of this bird, that he could not abstain from celebrating her miraculous properties in a short but elegant copy of verses; and does after, though confidently opposed, assert the main matter again in prose.
Such are the sufferages of Cardan, Scaliger, Hernandeo, Nierembergius. But Aldrovandus rejects that fable of her feeding on the dew of heaven, and of her incubiture on the back of the male, with much scorn and indignation. And as for the former, his reasons are no ways contemptible, he alledging that dew is a body not perfectly enough mixed, or heterogenial enough for food, nor the hard bill of the bird made for such easie uses as sipping this soft moisture.
To which I know not what Cardan and the rest would answer, unless this, that they mean by dew the more unctuous moisture of the air, which as it may not be alike every where, so these birds may be fitted with a natural sagacity to find it out where it is. That there is dew in this sense day and night, (as well as in the morning,) and in all seasons of the year; and therefore a constant supply of moisture and spirits to their perpetual flying, which they more copiously imbibe by reason of their exercise: That the thicker parts of this moisture stick and convert into flesh, and that the lightness of their feathers is so great, that their pains in sustaining themselves are not over-much. That what is homogeneal and simple to our sight is fit enough to be the rudiments of generation, all animals being generated of a kind of clear crystalline liquor; and that, therefore, it may be also of nutrition; that orpine and sea-house-leek are nourished and grow, being hung in the air, and that dock-weed has its root no deeper than near the upper parts of the water; and, lastly, that the bills of these birds are for their better flying, by cutting the way, and for better ornament; for the rectifying also and composing of their feathers, while they swim in the air with as much ease as swans do in river.
To his great impatiency against their manner of incubation, they would happily return this answer: That the way is not ridiculous; but it may be rather necessary from what Aldrovandus himself not only acknowledges but contends for, namely, that they have no feet at all. For hence it is manifest, that they cannot light upon the ground, nor any where rest on their bellies, and be able to get on wing again, because they cannot creep out of holes of rocks, as swifts and such like short-footed birds can, they having no feet at all to creep with. Besides, as Aristotle well argues concerning the long legs of certain water-fowl, that they were made so long, because they were to wade in the water and catch fish, adding that excellent aphorism, τὰ γαρ ὄργανα πρὸς τὸ ἔργον ἡ φύσις ποιεῖ ἀλλ᾽ ὐ τὸ ἔργον πρὸς τὰ ὄργανα, so may we rationally conclude, will they say, that as the long legs of these water-fowl imply a design of their haunting the water, so want of legs in these Manucodiatas argue they are never to come down to the earth, because they can neither stand there nor get off again. And if they never come on the earth, or any other resting-place, where can their eggs be laid or hatched but on the back of the male?
Besides that Cardan pleases himself with that Antiphonie in nature, that as the Ostrich being a bird, yet never flies in the air, and never rests upon the earth. And as for Aldrovandus, his presumption from the five several Manucodiatas that he had seen, and in which he could observe no such figuration of parts as implied a fitness for such a manner of incubation, Cardan will answer, Myself has seen three, and Scaliger one, who both agree against you.
However, you see that both Cardan, Aldrovandus, and the rest do jointly agree in allowing the Manucodiata no feet, as also in furnishing her with two strings, hanging at the hinder parts of her body, which Aldrovandus will have to be in the female as well as in the male, though Cardan’s experience reacheth not so far.
But Pighafetta and Clusius will easily end this grand controversy betwixt Cardan and Aldrovandus, if it be true which they report, and if they speak of the same kind of Birds of Paradise. For they both affirm that they have feet a palm long, and that with all confidence imaginable; but Nierembergius on the contrary affirms, that one that was an eye witness, and that had taken up one of these birds newly dead, told him that it had no feet at all. Johnston also gives his suffrage with Nierembergius in this, though with Aldrovandus he rejects the manner of their incubation.
But unless they can raise themselves from the ground by the stiffness of some of the feathers of their wings, or rather by virtue of those nervous strings which they may have a power to stiffen when they are alive, by transfusing spirits into them, and making them serve as well instead of legs to raise them from the ground as to hang upon the boughs of trees, by a slight thing being able to raise or hold up their light-feathered bodies in the air, as a small twig will us in the water, I should rather incline to the testimony of Pighafetta and Clusius than to the judgment of the rest, and believe those mariners that told him that the legs are pulled off by them that take them, and extenterate them and dry them in the sun for either their private use or sale.
Which conclusion would the best solve the credit of Aristotle, who long since has so peremptorily pronounced ὄτι πτηνὸν μόνον ὐδὲν ἐσιν ὥσπερ νευσικὸν μόνον ἐσιν ὶχθὸς. That there is not any bird that only flies as the fish only swims.