The
cubs were often given to allied States and princes, or to Condottieri
as a reward of their valor. In addition to the lions, the Florentines
began very early to keep leopards, for which a special keeper was
appointed. Borso of Ferrara used to set his lion to fight with bulls,
bears, and wild boars.
By the end of the fifteenth century, however, true menageries
(serragli), now reckoned part of the suitable appointments of a court,
were kept by many of the princes. 'It belongs to the position of the
great,' says Matarazzo, 'to keep horses, dogs, mules, falcons, and
other birds, court-jesters, singers, and foreign animals.' The
menagerie at Naples, in the time of Ferrante, contained even a giraffe
and a zebra, presented, it seems, by the ruler of Baghdad. Filippo
Maria Visconti possessed not only horses which cost him each 500 or
1,000 pieces of gold, and valuable English dogs, but a number of
leopards brought from all parts of the East; the expense of his hunting
birds, which were collected from the countries of Northern Europe,
amounted to 3,000 pieces of gold a month. King Emanuel the Great of
Portugal knew well what he was about when he presented Leo X with an
elephant and a rhinoceros. It was under such circumstances that the
foundations of a scientific zoology and botany were laid.
A practical fruit of these zoological studies was the establishment of
studs, of which the Mantuan, under Francesco Gonzaga, was esteemed the
first in Europe.
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