Shakspeare a Naturalist, 313 



The next quotations I shall insert, show that the existence 

 of the goitre, incident to mountaineers, was known in this 

 country in Shakspeare's time ; and that credit was given to 

 the inventions of travellers, too fertile in that age, concerning 

 the human race. From these inventions we must except the 

 cannibals, or anthropophagi, which, to the infamy of our 

 nature, did some few years ago exist in New Zealand. See 

 Pliny's Nat. Hist., lib. vii. cap. ii., for the fabulous varieties 

 of the human race. 



" When we were boys^ 



Who would believe that there were mountaineers, 



Dewlap'd like bulls, whose throats had hanging at them 



Wallets of flesh ? or that there were such men, 



Whose heads stood in their hearts." Tempesty act 3. sc. 3. 



" The cannibals that each other eat, 

 The anthropophagiy and men whose heads 

 Do grow beneath their shoulders." OthellOy act 1 * sC. 3. 



I now proceed with a more regular distribution of my 

 subject. [" Unicorns " are the subject next treated of; but 

 these we pass, and take that which succeeds them : the stag.] 



STAG. 



" The wretched animal [a stag] heaved forth such groans, 

 That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat 

 Almost to bursting ; and the big round tears 

 Coursed one another down his innocent nose i 



In piteous chase." As you like ity act 2. sc. 1. •) 



" Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends." Ibid, > 



" If we be English deer, be then in blood : 

 Not rascal-like to fall down with a pinch ; 

 But rather moody mad, and desperate stags. 

 Turn on the bloody hounds with heads of steel. 

 And make the cowards stand aloof at bay." 



Henry VL, Part i. act 4. sc. 2* ; 

 " Like the stag when snow the pasture sheets, ; 



The barks of trees thou browsedst." , 



Antony and Cleopatrtty act 1 . sc. 4. 



The teafs of the wounded stag, so pathetically described 

 above, I find thus mentioned by Sir Philip Sydney {Arcadiay 

 b. 1.) Kalander, " with a crossbow^ sent a death to the poor 

 beast [a deer], *who mth tears showed the unkindness he 

 took of man's cruelty :" and Herrick makes apartofOberon's 

 feast to consist of " slain stag's tears." 



In Jesse's Gleanings, p. 187., the fact of a wounded stag 

 being abandoned by the herd is thus confirmed. " It is well 

 known, that, when a hard-pressed deer tries to rejoin his com- 

 panions, they endeavour to avoid and get away from him as 

 much as possible, or try to drive him away with their horns." 

 And in the same author it is, I believe, mentioned, that deer 



