241For his sister, ignorant of fate, had handed over her son to him to be taught, a boy who had completed twice six birthdays, with a mind quick to take instruction. 244He also took as a pattern the spines marked in the middle of a fish, and cut continuous teeth in sharp iron, and discovered the use of the saw. 247He was the first, too, to bind two iron arms together from a single joint, so that, while they stood an equal distance apart, one part would stand still and the other draw a circle. 250Daedalus was jealous, and threw him headlong from Minerva's sacred citadel, pretending he had slipped.
251But Pallas, who favours talent, caught him and turned him into a bird, and clothed him in feathers in mid-air. 254But the vigour of his once swift mind passed into his wings and his feet: the name he had before remained too. 256Yet this bird does not lift its body high, nor make its nest in branches and lofty treetops: it flutters near the ground and lays its eggs in hedges, and, mindful of its old fall, it fears high places.