Note 48 — Chapter V
Reading edition
In a ‘Brief History’ by Eugenius Philalethes, p. 93, we are told; ‘It is a vulgar error that the pelican turneth her beak against her breast and therewith pierceth it till the blood gush out, wherewith she nourisheth her young; whereas a pelican hath a beak broad and flat, much like the slice of apothecaries and chirurgeons wherewith they spread their plasters, no way fit to pierce, as Laurentius Gerbertus counsellor and physitian to Henry the Fourth of France in his book of Popular Errors hath observed.’