guese.
The greater number were found in a kind of chamois ; however, we are
told that the bezoar was not found in all these animals, "but only in
the old ones." 20
A
letter written in the sixteenth century by one who had travelled
extensively in India and in Peru, illustrates the ideas of that time
regarding both Oriental and Occidental bezoars:
A
gentleman living about twenty-eight years in these Countries, writes to
his Friend, that he saw those Animals out of which comes the Bezoar,
and saith, they are very like Goats, only they have no Horns;
and are so swift, that they are forc'd to shoot them with guns. He
tells us, that he and some Friends, on the 10th of June 1568,
hunted some of these Creatures, and in five Days kill'd many of them ;
and that in one of the oldest of them, they made diligent Search for
the stone, but found it not, neither in the Ventricle, nor in any other
Part of the Animal. They ask'd the Indians that attended upon them,
where the Stones lay; they denied they knew anything of them, being
very envious and unwilling to disclose such a Secret. At length (he
saith) a Boy about twelve years old perceiving us to be very
inquisitive, and to be very desirous of Satisfaction in that
Particular, shew'd us a certain Receptacle and (as it were) a Purse, into which they receive their eaten herbs, which afterwards when churned, they convey into the Ventricle.*1
The
same circumstances were observed by this informant in regard to the
Peruvian bezoars, and from the "pouch" of one of these animals were
taken no less than nine stones, "which, by the help of nature, seemed
to be made of the Juice of those salutiferous Herbs, which were crammed
up into this little Pouch."22
While
the Occidental bezoar from South America enjoyed a special repute in
Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when bezoars were
so freely used as poison-
" Valentini, " Museum museorum, oder Vollständige Schau-Bühne," Frankfurt am Main, 1714, bk. iii, cap. 13, §§ 1, 2, p. 446.
" Pancirollus, " The History of Many Memorable Things," London, 1715, p. 288.
■ Ibid., loc. cit.
