Natural history in Shakespeare's time : being extracts illustrative of the subject as he knew it / Made by H. W. Seager, M. B., &c. Also pictures thereunto belonging.

  • Seager, H. W. (Herbert West), 1848-
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Natural history in Shakespeare's time : being extracts illustrative of the subject as he knew it / Made by H. W. Seager, M. B., &c. Also pictures thereunto belonging. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    from that fish. The seventh hath wings on the back, like the wings of a locust. They are all little living creatures, not much differing in proportion from the great scarabee or horse-fly, except in the fashion of their tails. The coun- tenance is fawning, and virgin-like ; notwithstanding the fair face, it beareth a sharp sting in the tail. And of all other things they love fresh and clean linen, and next to their flesh put on this clean linen, as a man would put on a shirt. The manner of their breed or generation is double,— one way is by putrefaction, and the other by laying of eggs. When sea-crabs die, and their bodies are dried upon the earth, when the sun entereth into Cancer and Scorpio, out of the putrefaction thereof ariseth a Scorpion, and so out of the putrefied body of the crayfish burned, and out of the basilisk beaten into pieces and so putrefied. And about Estamenus in India there are abundance of Scorpions generated, only by corrupt rain-water standing in that place. And when one had planted the herb Basilisca [probably basil] on a wall in the room or place thereof he found two Scorpions. And some say that if a man chaw in his mouth fasting this herb basil, before he wash, and afterward lay the same abroad uncovered where no sun cometh at it for the space of seven nights, taking it in all the day-time, he shall at length find it transmitted into a Scorpion, with a tail of seven knots. Out of an herb Sissumbria putrefied. Scorpions are engendered. And out of the crocodile's eggs do many times come Scorpions, which at their first egression do kill their dam that hatched them. The Lybians, who among other nations are most of all troubled with Scorpions, do use to set their beds far from any wall^ and very high also from the floor, and they also set the feet of their beds in vessels of water. Then the Scorpions in their hatred to mankind climb up to the ceiling, and one of them taketh hold upon that place in the house or ceiling over the bed wherein they find the man asleep, and so hangeth thereby, putting out and stretching his sting to hurt him, but finding it too short, and not being able to reach him, he suffereth another of his fellows to come and hang as fast by him as he doth upon his hold, and so that second giveth the wound,—and if that second be not able likewise, because of the distance, to come at the man, then they both admit a third to hang upon them, and so a