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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    barren land and untilled. And it is as it were a general rule, that all shrubs and trees with many thorns and pricks be wounden and wreathed together, and be clipped and succoured and defended each with other, and none of them hurteth other. And when they be felled or rooted up, they be bound in faggots and in heaps, and burnt in ovens and in furnaces, and for thorns be kindly dry, they be soon kindled in the fire, and give a strong light, and sparkleth, and cracketh, and maketh much noise, and soon after they be brought all to nought. Of thorns men make hedges and pavises [ large shields, according to Halliwell and Minsheu, but here certainly fences —sepes, Bartholo- mew'], with which men defend and succour themselves and their own. Bartholo?nezv {Berthclet), bk. xvli. § 149. Throstle, Thrush. Midsummer Night's Dream, iii. i, 130. Winter's Tale, iv. 3, 10. Thrash, throssel or mavis. Minsheu's Dictionary, s.v. The Throstles or mavises all summer be painted about the neck with sundry colours, but in winter they be all of one colour. Holland's Pliny, bk. x. ch. xxix. Thyme. Tick. Midsummer Night's Dream, ii. i, 249. V. Cabbage. Troilus and Cressida, iii. 2, 315. Tick—a dog-louse. Minsheu^s Dictionary, s.v. There is a creature which hath evermore the head fast sticking within the skin of a beast, and so by sucking of blood liveth, and swells withal : the only living creature of all other that hath no way at all to rid excrements out of the body ; by reason whereof when it is too full, the skin doth crack and burst, and so his very food is cause of his