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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$winter, and in the summer become grubs, which, invigorated by the warmth of the sun and by nocturnal dew, produce wings for flying. Butterflies should be killed in the month of April when they hurt the bees. llortus Sanit^itis, part iii. (Of Birds) § 96. Butterflies be called small fowls, and be most in fruit in apples, and breedeth therein worms that come of their stinking filth. For of malshrags [caterpillars] cometh and breedeth Butterflies, and of the dirt of Butterflies left upon leaves breedeth and cometh again malshrags. BarthoItjUiczv {^Berthclet\ bk. xviii. § 47. [In Mouffet's Theatre of Insects are described and pictured some eighty different moths and Butterflies (including apparently, some flies and beetles), but no English names are given. He says that the venomous dung of Butterflies, with aniseed, goat's milk cheese, hog's blood, galbanum, and opoponax made into troches (or lozenges) with good sharp wine, and dried in the sun, allure fish to your hook,] Buzzard. O slow-wing'd turtle ! shall a buzzard tai;c tlicc : Taming of the Shrew, ii. i, 208. More pity that the eagle should be mew'd While kites and buzzards prey at liberty. King Richard III., i. i, \i,2--\. The Buzzard is of the class of hawks ; but somewhat darker, and very slow and sluggish in flight ; yet it lives on prey, which it is able to catch by cunning, or when it is let by some sickness or slowness. This bird is very sweet in taste. Hortus Sanitatis, ch. xvii. [A liuzzard was one of the chief dishes in Lieutenant Slicer's valiant dinner, for which see Cartvvright's The Ordinary, ii. i.] Cabbage or Cole or Colewort. Good worts ! good cabbage I Merry Wives of Windsor, i. I, \zx. The tombstone of the introducer of Cabbage into England is said to exist at Wimborne, probably the Sir Anthony Ashley who was (according to Anthony-a-Wood) a woman-$