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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    A Tiger is bigger than the greatest horse. It hath been falsely believed that all Tigers be females, and that they engender with the wind. The male is seldom taken, be- cause at the sight of a man he runneth away. When they hear the sound of bells and timbrels, they grow into such a rage and madness, that they tear their own flesh from their backs. The Indians near the River Ganges have a certain herb growing like Bugloss, which they take and press the juice out of it, and in still, silent, calm nights, they pour the same down at the mouth of the Tiger's den, by virtue whereof the Tigers are continually enclosed, not daring to come out over it through some secret oppo- sition in nature, but famish and die, howling in their caves through intolerable hunger. The manner of this beast is, when she seeth that her young ones are shipped away, she maketh so great lamentation upon the sea-shore, howling, braying and ranking [perhaps raging: Spenser uses the adverb rank in this sense], that many times she dieth in the same place ; but if she recover all her young ones again, she departeth with unspeakable joy, without taking any revenge for their offered injury. Topsell, Four-footed Beasts, pp. 548-9. The Tiger as fierce and cruel as lions, making prey of man and beast, yet rather devouring black men than white ; whose mustachios are holden for mortal poison, and, being given in meats, cause men to die mad. Purchas' Pilgrims, p. 559 (cd. 1616). Tike, Tyke. King Lear, iii. 6, 73. King Henry V., ii. i, 31. [Tyke is now so well known a word for cur, that Steevens' and Malone's notes on the latter passage seem to us ridicu- lous.] Toad. A Toad is a manner venomous frog, and dwelleth both in water and in land ; and he changeth his skin in age ; and eateth alway certain herbs, and keepeth and holdeth