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 little beast like to a kid. Also in Ind be one-horned oxen with white specks and bones, and with thick hoofs as horses have. Bartholumeiu {Berthelet), bk. xviii. § 90. Trades that lay dead and rotten, and were in all men's opinion utterly damned, started out of their trance, as though they had drunk of Aqua Coelestis, or Unicorn's horn, and swore to fall to their old occupations. Dekker, '-'The Wonderful Year 1603. Some hunt the Unicorn for the treasure on his head, and they are like covetous men, that care not whom they kill for riches. Uid., Lanthorn and Candlelight, ch. in. In St, Mark's church they will show you two Unicorns' horns, of which the red is the male, and the yellow the female. A true Description of what is most worthy to be seen in Italy, etc. {circa 1590). [Topsell ( F'our-footed Beasts, pp. 551, 552) takes those who do not believe in the Unicorn very seriously to task for their unbelief, not to say atheism. He inclines to the belief that the Unicorn is the wild ass of India, but is not sure, be- cause the feet of the wild asses are whole and not cloven like the Unicorn's, and their colour white in their body, and purple on their head; and the horn differeth in colour from the Unicorn's, for the middle of it is only black, the root of it white, and the top of it purple ; and the Indians of that horn do make pots, affirming that whosoever drinketh in one of those pots shall never take disease that day, and, if they be wounded, shall feel no pain, or safely pass through the fire without burning, nor yet be poisoned in their drink, and there- fore such cups are only in the possession of their kings, neither is it lawful for any man except the king to hunt that beast. Now in the kingdom of Basman, which is subject to the great Cham, there are Unicorns somewhat lesser than Elephants, having hair like oxen, heads like boars, feet like elephants, one horn in the middle of their foreheads, and a sharp, thorny tongue, wherewith they destroy both man and beast, and they muddle in the dirt like swine. In a certain region of the new- found world, under the equinoctial, there is a living creature, with one horn (which is crooked and not great), having the head of a dragon, and a beard upon his chin, his neck long and stretched out like a serpent's, the residue of his body like to a hart's, saving that his feet, colour, and mouth, are like a lion's.].