Weasels are said to be so skilled in medicine that, if
by any chance their babies are killed, they can make them
come alive again if they can get at them.

  Now these creatures signify not a few of you fellows,
who willingly accept by ear the seed of God's word, but
who, shackled by the love of earthly things, put it away
in the wrong place and dissimulate what you hear.


E R I C I U S the Hedgehog is an animal which is covered
with spikes, and that is how it gets its name; for it curls
itself up and is inclosed in the spikes' with which it is
protected against stratagems in all directions.               As soon
as it gets a presentiment of anything nasty, first it bristles
  1 'Ericius' also means by transference a.c/ieval-de-frise. The philologist
seems
to think that the urchin is named from the engine, not the engine from the
urchin.


exasperated by the take-in, turned Galanthis into a weasel-with the added
curse
that the girl would always have to bear her own children through that ear
by
which she had deceived the goddess.'  Ulyssis Aidrovandi, De Quadrup. Digit.
Yivip. Lib. ii, 314.
  All the same, Greek fables were generally invented to account for what
they
took to be natural phenomena, not the other way about. The theory concerning
the weasel's ear may yet be explained by the field-naturalist.
  The patristic writers and some later theologians really did believe that
'the
conception of Christ was effected supernaturally through the Virgin's ear.
As God spoke the world into existence, so the voice of the Most High uttering
salutation through the mouth of the angel caused the Virgin to conceive,
'and
the Word was made flesh'. But as spoken words are addressed to the ear, and
through this organ find lodgement in the mind and thus bear fruit, it was
assumed
that the incarnation of the Logos was accomplished in the same manner.  E.
P.
EVANS.
  'Deus per ange/um /o9ue6atur et Virgo per auretn impregnabatur.' Sr AUGusTINE.
            'Gaua'e Virgo, mater CAristi,
             Q uae par aurem concepisli.'
                                        -attributed to St Thomas ii Becket.

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