Bestiary: Alep-fish, Ostrich, Swan, and Stork
Four animal emblems, including the iron-eating ostrich and dying swan's song
Four brief bestiary entries fill this page of Notebook H. The Alep fish cannot live out of water; the ostrich, emblem of arms and nourishment of captains, digests iron and hatches its eggs by gaze alone. The spotless white swan sings sweetly as it dies, its song ending its life; the stork drives illness from itself by drinking salt water, abandons a faithless mate, and in old age is brooded over and fed by its own young until it dies. The page carries only Leonardo's mirror-script prose, with no drawing.
On this page
The Alep fish and the iron-eating ostrich
The Alep fish does not live out of the water. The ostrich, standing for arms and the nourishment of captains, converts iron into its nourishment and hatches its eggs with its gaze.
The swan's dying song
The swan is white without any spot and sweetly sings as it dies, which song ends its life.
The stork tended by its young
The stork drives illness from itself by drinking salt water, and abandons its mate if it finds it at fault. When it grows old, its young brood over it and feed it until it dies.