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

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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$Baboons are a kind of apes, whose heads are like dogs, and their other parts like a man's. Some are much given to fishing ; again, there are some which abhor fishes. Some there are which are able to write, and naturally to discern letters. They will eat venison, which they by reason ot their swiftness take easily, and having taken it tear it to pieces, and roast it in the sun. Jopse//, *' Four-footed Beasts, pp. 8, 9. Balm. Pierced to the soul with slander's venom'd spear, The which no balm can cure but his heart-blood. King Richard II., i. i, 171-2. My pity hath been balm to heal their wounds. 3 King Henry VI., iv. 8, 4.1. Balm drunk in wine is good against the bitings of venomous beasts, comforts the heart, and driveth away all melancholy and sadness. The juice thereof glueth together green wounds, being put into oil, unguent or Balm for that purpose, and maketh it of greater efiicacy. Gerard's Herbal, s.v. This Balm groweth in no place, but only there [i.e.^ beside Cairo]. And though that men bring of the plants for to plant in other countries, they grow well and fair, but they bring forth no fructuous thing. And men cut the branches with a sharp flintstone or with a sharp bone, when men will go to cut them : for whoso cut them with iron, it would destroy his virtue and his nature. And men make always that Balm to be tilled of the Christian men or else it would not fructify, as the Saracens say them- selves: for it hath been often time proved. Sir Jo hi Mandevtlle, ch. \. [He gives elaborate directions for distinguishing the true from the counterfeit balm.] Balsam, Balsamum \i.e. Balm]. TiMON OF Athens, iii. 5, 110. Comedy of Errors, iv. i, 88. Balsamum is set tofore all other smells, and was some- time granted but to one land among all lands, that is to wit Judea. And was not had nor found but in two gardens of the King's. Bartholornczv {BcrtMet), bk. xvii. § 18.$