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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$this theory is the reason why the Willow is the badge of the forsaken lover ?] Of Willows be perches made and Jj rails for vines. Of the rinds be made bonds and hoops. ■ And [another kind of] Willows be less and more pliant, and therewith men bind wine-pipes and tuns. And of the third kind of Willows be made divers needful things to household, as stools, seats, paniers and cups. Oft in the hollowness thereof lieth venomous worms, as adders and serpents, and therefore it is not sicher [safe] to sleep under the Willow-tree. Bartholomew {Berthlet), bk. xvii. § 14+. [Gerard has engravings of seven sorts of Willows, including the osier or water-willow.] Being pilled they are excellent good for the more delicate sort of wicker-ware, and better far than stubborn leather; but principally for leaning-chairs, wherein a man or woman may gently take a nap, sitting at ease, and reposing most sweetly. Holland's Pliny, bk. xvi. ch. xxxvii. [Evelyn ( Silva, p. loi) enumerates twenty-two kinds of Willow, withy, sallow and osier. He thinks that the in- genious house-wife might make of the willow, cotton, cushions, and pillows of chastity. From the osier Evelyn says are made baskets, flaskets, hampers, cages, lattices, cradles, and the bodies of coaches and waggons, for which 'tis of excellent use, light, durable and neat, as it may be wrought and covered,— chairs, hurdles, stays, bands, fish-wives, and for all wicker and twiggy works.] Wine. The worthiness and praising of W^ine might not Bacchus himself describe at the full, though he were alive ; for among all liquors and juice of trees, Wine beareth the price, for passing all liquors Wine moderately drunken most com- forteth the body, and gladdeth the heart, and healeth and saveth wounds and evils. Wine heateth cold bodies, and cooleth hot bodies, and moisteth dry bodies, and abateth and drieth moist bodies. And in Wine take heed of these things :—of the liquor, of colour, of savour and smell. Of colours of Wine be four manners, white, black, citron [yellow], and red. Bartholo7new BertMet), bk. xvii. § 184. I$