A Little Book on Colors

...of which kind, besides horses, some keen dogs are seen, which they call muscati from their similarity to flies, just as a horse is scutulatus (checkered) from scutula (little plates); which grooms call pomulatus from the appearance of small apples, and if they are somewhat broad circles, rotatus.

Finally, nature seems to love cœruleum (blue); for with it, as we said in the beginning, she adorned the sea, and the sky itself, which she would never have adorned with shining stars if she did not also delight most of all in fuluum (tawny/yellow). But because we see in turn the earth either clothed in greenness, or, stripped of that ornament, to be pullum (dark/dusky), or even covered with snowy whiteness, no one can doubt that green, dark, and white are pleasing to nature. Moreover, night is black, Indians and Ethiopians are black. Therefore, the mother of things rejoices in the black color, which the blood of men and other living beings easily declares to be not at all abhorrent to red.

THE LITTLE SPIDER.

While the light fly wanders in the loose nets of the little spider, having attempted flight, it entangles itself all the more, and shaking its wings, it sparkles with a buzzing sound. While it searches for an escape, lo, the little spider slips down at once, waiting to see if the prey would strike the little net, which she herself had woven with a fine thread under the willow, and the wicked creature seizes the trembling fly with a savage bite. It, resounding again with a whirring, and struggling with its feet, is shaken, but no flight is given, for with her pincers the cruel creature pressed it, and tenacious, urges it on, and turns it about in every way. And at last, overcome by great struggling, the miserable winged creature dies, breathing out its tiny soul. But how cunning she is at composing blind deceptions, and at weaving fine threads in all places...