MUIRHEAD'S MYSTERIES: White starlings and a cure for vipers

Richard Muirhead is an old friend of the CFZ. I have been friends with him for 40 years now, since we were kids together in Hong Kong. He is undoubtedly one of the two best researchers I have ever met; he and Nigel Wright both have what Charlie Fort would have no doubt called a wild talent; a talent for going into a library, unearthing a stack of old newspapers, and coming back with some hitherto overlooked gem of arcane knowledge. Twice a week he wanders into the Macclesfield Public Library and comes out with enough material for a blog post..

Now that Easter is over I`m returning with Fortean zoology from the Macclesfield Courier.

Now we`re up to January 1814:

"RARA AVIS-On Tuesday se`enight a person of Boston (1) shot a white starling, which was one of a flock of birds of the ordinary colour,flying in the pastures round that town. Being only slightly wounded, it is yet alive. The gunner observed another white starling in the flock."

(1) Boston is, by the way, the town in Lincolnshire

Macclesfield Courier. January 22nd 1814.p.2

"Prof. Mangeli (?) has published in the Milan Journal, a long report upon the action of the venom of vipers. He states, as the result of his experience, the ammonite is the only sovereign remedy for the bite of those reptiles, and that opium and musk, which have been hitherto prescribed, have no certain effect".