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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    wealth. The more Sheep, the dearer [cheaper.?] the wooJ, the flesh and the fell ; the more Sheep, the dearer corn and grain, beside beef, butter, eggs and cheese. Pastures consume tillage ; the want of tillage breeds beggars, decays villages, hamlets and upland towns. It is better to want wool than corn. Sheep than men, but excess and prodigality, which cannot away-with measure, have brought this England to great penury. BtUnian s addition to BarthoJomeiv, bk. xviii. § Hi. Sheep are wont to follow them that stop their ears with their wool. Upton, Notable Things, bk. v. i< 48. About Erythrea, there is such abundance of good pasture and herbs so grateful to Sheep, that if they be not let blood once in thirty days, they perish by suffocation, and the milk of those Sheep yieldeth no whey. The rams of England have greater horns than any other rams in the world, and sometimes they have four or six horns on their head, as hath been often seen. In very cold countries, when snow and winter covereth the earth, then Sheep have no galls, but in the summer when they go abroad again to feed in the fields, they are replenished with galls. Sheep, when they have eaten Eryngium [sea-holly], all stand still, and have no power to go out of their pastures till their keeper come and take it out of their mouths. The Sheep of Lydia and Macedonia grow fat with eating of fishes. If there appear upon grass spiders' webs, or cobwebs which bear up little drops of water, then they must not be suffered to feed in those places for fear of poisoning. Because the head of Sheep is most weak, therefore it ought to be fed turned from the sun. llpsell, Four-footed Beasts, pp. 464-69. Shell. King Lear, i. 5, 26. It' is an usual thing to crush and break both ^gg- and fish-shells, so soon as ever the meat is supped and eaten out of them, or else to bore the same through with a spoon, steel or bodkin. [Marginal note : Because after- wards no witches might prick them with a needle in the