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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    that be of other nations, what nation soever it be. Also Aristotle saith that in a certain mountain scorpions grieve no strangers ; but they sting and slay men of the country, Bartholomezv {Berthe/et), bk. xviii. § 9. Asp's sting is not curable, but only with the water of a stone washed, which they take out of the sepulchre of an ancient king. Batman's addition to Bartholutnew, he. cit. In Egypt so great is the reverence they bear to Asps, that if any in the house have need to rise in the night-time out of their beds, they first of all give out a sign by knacking of the fingers, lest they should harm the Asp, and so provoke it against them ; at the hearing whereof, all the Asps get them to their holes and lodgings, till the person stirring be laid again in his bed. A domestical Asp had young ones ; in her absence one of her young ones killed a child in the house ; when the old one came again according to her custom to seek her meat, the killed child was laid forth, and so she understood the harm ; then went she and killed that young one, and never more appeared in that house. Also there was an Asp that fell in love with a little boy that kept geese, whose love to the said boy was so fervent, that the male of the said Asp grew jealous thereof. Where- upon one day as he lay asleep, [he] set upon him to kill him, but the other seeing the danger of her love, awaked and delivered him. All the Asps of Nilus do thirty days before the flood remove themselves and their young ones into the mountains, and this is done yearly, once at the least. A man carrying a bottle of vinegar was bitten by an Asp, whiles by chance he trod thereupon, but as long as he bore the vinegar and did not set it down, he felt no pain thereby, but as often as to ease himself he set the bottle out of his hand, he felt torment by the poison. Topscil, History of Serpents, pp. 633-6. Ass. The Ass is a simple beast and a slow, and therefore soon overcome and subject to man's service. The elder the Ass is, the fouler he waxeth from day to day, and hairy and rough, and is a melancholic beast, that is cold and dry,