They scorn your words, cried Aedituus; they are none of your singing-birds; but, to make amends, they feed as much as the best two of them all.

Pray where are their hens?
where are their females?
said I.

They have none, answered Aedituus.

How comes it to pass then, asked Panurge, that they are thus bescabbed, bescurfed, all embroidered o'er the phiz with carbuncles, pushes, and pock-royals, some of which undermine the handles of their faces?
This same fashionable and illustrious disease, quoth Aedituus, is common among that kind of birds, because they are pretty apt to be tossed on the salt deep.
He then acquainted us with the occasion of their coming.

This next to us, said he, looks so wistfully upon you to see whether he may not find among your company a stately gaudy kind of huge dreadful birds of prey, which yet are so untoward that they ne'er could be brought to the lure nor to perch on the glove.