Bartholomaeus Anglicus (auch: Bartholomew of England, Bartholomew the Englishman; * um 1190; † nach 1250) war ein franziskanischer Scholastiker und Autor von De proprietatibus rerum, einem Vorläufer der Enzyklopädie und einem der ersten Nachschlagewerke des Mittelalters, das auch die Pflanzenwelt berücksichtigt.

Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus

Hrsg: Robert Steele
London, Alexander Moring (The King's Classics), 1893/1905


Book 18

In Pontus is a manner kind of beasts, that dwelleth now in land and
now in water, and maketh houses and dens arrayed with wonder craft in
the brinks of rivers and of waters. For these beasts live together in
flocks, and love beasts of the same kind, and come together and cut
rods and sticks with their teeth, and bring them home to their dens in
a wonder wise, for they lay one of them upright on the ground, instead
of a sled or of a dray, with his legs and feet reared upward, and lay
and load the sticks and wood between his legs and thighs, and draw him
home to their dens, and unlade and discharge him there, and make their
dwelling places right strong by great subtlety of craft. In their
houses be two chambers or three distinguished, as it were three
cellars, and they dwell in the over place when the water ariseth, and
in the nether when the water is away, and each of them hath a certain
hole properly made in the cellar, by the which hole he putteth out his
tail in the water, for the tail is of fishy kind, it may not without
water be long kept without corruption.

Digitale Ausgabe bei Gutenberg.org

Digitale Ausgabe des lateinischen Originals bei der Universität Düsseldorf