276 SHAKESPEARE'S [SCORPION. 



from that fish. The seventh hath wings on the back, like 

 the wings of a locust. They are all little living creatures, 

 not much differing in proportion from the great scarabee or 

 horse-fly, except in the fashion of their tails. The coun- 

 tenance is fawning, and virgin-like ; notwithstanding the fair 

 face, it beareth a sharp sting in the tail. And of all other 

 things they love fresh and clean linen, and next to their 

 flesh put on this clean linen, as a man would put on a 

 shirt. The manner of their breed or generation is double, 

 one way is by putrefaction, and the other by laying of 

 eggs. When sea-crabs die, and their bodies are dried upon 

 the earth, when the sun entereth into Cancer and Scorpio, 

 out of the putrefaction thereof ariseth a Scorpion, and so 

 out of the putrefied body of the crayfish burned, and out 

 of the basilisk beaten into pieces and so putrefied. And 

 about Estamenus in India there are abundance of Scorpions 

 generated, only by corrupt rain-water standing in that place. 

 And when one had planted the herb Basilisca [probably 

 basil] on a wall in the room or place thereof he found 

 two Scorpions. And some say that if a man chaw in his 

 mouth fasting this herb basil, before he wash, and afterward 

 lay the same abroad uncovered where no sun cometh at it 

 for the space of seven nights, taking it in all the day-time, 

 he shall at length find it transmitted into a Scorpion, with 

 a tail of seven knots. Out of an herb Sissumbria putrefied, 

 Scorpions are engendered. And out of the crocodile's eggs 

 do many times come Scorpions, which at their first 

 egression do kill their dam that hatched them. The 

 Lybians, who among other nations are most of all troubled 

 with Scorpions, do use to set their beds far from any wall, 

 and very high also from the floor, and they also set the 

 feet of their beds in vessels of water. Then the Scorpions 

 in their hatred to mankind climb up to the ceiling, and 

 one of them taketh hold upon that place in the house or 

 ceiling over the bed wherein they find the man asleep, and 

 so hangeth thereby, putting out and stretching his sting to 

 hurt him, but finding it too short, and not being able to 

 reach him, he suffereth another of his fellows to come and 

 hang as fast by him as he doth upon his hold, and so that 

 second giveth the wound, and if that second be not able 

 likewise, because of the distance, to come at the man, then 

 they both admit a third to hang upon them, and so a 



