as we do here beasts in the market. And there is a common house in
that city that is all full of small furnaces, and thither bring
women of the town their eyren of hens, of geese, and or ducks for
to be put into those furnaces. And they that keep that house cover
them with heat of horse dung, without hen, goose or duck or any
other fowl. And at the end of three weeks or of a month they come
again and take their chickens and flourish them and bring them
forth, so that all the country is full of them. And so men do
there both winter and summer.

Also in that country and in others also, men find long apples to
sell, in their season, and men clepe them apples of Paradise; and
they be right sweet and of good savour. And though ye cut them in
never so many gobbets or parts, overthwart or endlong, evermore ye
shall find in the midst the figure of the Holy Cross of our Lord
Jesu. But they will rot within eight days, and for that cause men
may not carry of those apples to no far countries; of them men find
the mountance of a hundred in a basket, and they have great leaves
of a foot and a half of length, and they be convenably large. And
men find there also the apple tree of Adam, that have a bite at one
of the sides; and there be also fig trees that bear no leaves, but
figs upon the small branches; and men clepe them figs of Pharaoh.

Also beside Cairo, without that city, is the field where balm
groweth; and it cometh out on small trees, that be none higher than
to a man's breeks' girdle, and they seem as wood that is of the
wild vine. And in that field be seven wells, that our Lord Jesu
Christ made with one of his feet, when he went to play with other
children. That field is not so well closed, but that men may enter
at their own list; but in that season that the balm is growing, men