198 Dr. Heineken’s Entomological Notices. 
In the Jast (16th) number of this Journal is a paper by Mr. MacLeay 
on the Ceratitis citriperda, and although he has not given a detailed 
description of it, yet from the figure and the statement of its ‘ having 
been seen on some oranges in the market-place of Funchal,’”’ I have 
be supposed to mean either the elytra of beetles, or dung. That shards signified 
scales, is shown by a passage in Gower, who speaks of “a dragon—whose 
“« shardes shynen as the sonne.” If we admit, and the sense appears to require 
it, that by shards in the passage quoted above from Antony and Cleopatra, 
Shakspeare meant scaly wings, or elyéra, we have here a second meaning. A 
third instance of its use by Shakspeare occurs in Cymbeline, where it is said, 
“« we find The sharded beetle in a safer hold Than is the full-winged eagle.” 
Here the epithet applied to the beetle may also mean covered by elytra, as op- 
posed to the full wings of the eagle; and such is the interpretation given to it 
by Steevens, Malone, Holt White, and Archdeacon Nares. But in this in- 
stance it is also possible that a third signification may attach to it, that given 
by Tollet; that the “ sharded beetle means the beetle lodged in dung,” its hum- 
ble earthly abode “ being opposed to the lofty eyry of the eagle.’’ The proofs 
adduced by Tollet that shard signifies dung, (cowshard, according to him, be- 
ing the word generally used in the north of Staffordshire for cow-dung), are 
from A polite Palace of Pettie his Pleasure, &e. ‘‘ The humble-bee taketh no 
“ scorn to lodge in a cow’s foul shard:”’ and from Bacon’s Natural History, ‘Turf 
“and peat and cow-shards, are cheap fuels, and last long.’’ To these Mr. Holt 
White adds, from Dryden’s Hind and Panther, “ Such souls as shards produce, 
“ such beetle things,” a quotation bearing very closely upon the subject. A 
corresponding quotation to that adduced from Bacon is to be met within A true 
report of Capteine Frobisher his last voyage, ke., where it is said inthe Orkneys 
that “They are destitute of wood, their fire is turffes and cowe-shardes.”’ In 
Ben Jonson’s Tale of a Tub, one of the characters exclaims, “ Marry a cow- 
“ shard!” In the opinion of Archdeacon Nares, this meaning is derived from 
the preceding one, “ Cow-shards,” he says, ‘appear to mean only the hard 
“« scales of dried cow-dung.”’ 
That it was unnecessary for the purpose of obtaining the signifieation dung 
to change the orthography from shard to sharn, is shown by the previous quo- 
tations. Authc-ity for the latter, and closely applying to our subject, is, how- 
ever, to be met with in A briefe Discourse of the Spanish State, quoted by Mr. 
Holt White, ‘“ Hew that nation, rising like the beetle from the cowshern, hurt- 
“ leth against all things.” Still more apposite, although scarcely likely to be 
met with, unless by a naturalist, is the ‘ Searabeus stercorarius vel fimarius, 
* a dung Beetle, or Sharnbug” of Merrett’s Pinax, page 201.—E. T. B. 
Se 
