286 SHAKESPEARE'S [SHELL 





wealth. The more Sheep, the dearer [cheaper?] the wool 

 the flesh and the fell ; the more Sheep, the dearer corn and 

 grain, beside beef, butter, eggs and cheese. Pastures 

 consume tillage ; the want of tillage breeds beggars, decays 

 villages, hamlets and upland towns. It is better to want 

 wool than corn, Sheep than men, but excess and prodigality, 

 which cannot away-with measure, have brought this England 

 to great penury. 



Batman s addition to Bartholomew^ bk. xviii. 81. 



SHEEP are wont to follow them that stop their ears with 

 their wool. Lupton, "Notable Things," bk. v. 48. 



ABOUT Erythrea, there is such abundance of good pasture 

 and herbs so grateful to Sheep, that if they be not let blood 

 once in thirty days, they perish by suffocation, and the milk 

 of those Sheep yieldeth no whey. The rams of England 

 have greater horns than any other rams in the world, and 

 sometimes they have four or six horns on their head, as 

 hath been often seen. In very cold countries, when snow 

 and winter covereth the earth, then Sheep have no galls, 

 but in the summer when they go abroad again to feed in 

 the fields, they are replenished with galls. Sheep, when 

 they have eaten Eryngium [sea-holly], all stand still, and 

 have no power to go out of their pastures till their keeper 

 come and take it out of their mouths. The Sheep of 

 Lydia and Macedonia grow fat with eating of fishes. If 

 there appear upon grass spiders' webs, or cobwebs which 

 bear up little drops of water, then they must not be 

 suffered to feed in those places for fear of poisoning. 

 Because the head of Sheep is most weak, therefore it ought 

 to be fed turned from the sun. 



Topsell, "Four-footed Beasts/' pp. 464-69. 



Shell. 



KING LEAR, i. 5, 26. 



IT is an usual thing to crush and break both egg- and 

 fish-shells, so soon as ever the meat is supped and eaten 

 out of them, or else to bore the same through with a 

 spoon, steel or bodkin. [Marginal note : Because after- 

 wards no witches might prick them with a needle in the 



