Signification of Shard. 197 



'* some weight into the scale of those who contend for the orthography 

 " above (born) and that the meaning of shard in this place is dung, if 

 " they had been aware that the beetle fScarahmis stercorariusj is actu- 

 " ally born amongst dung and nowhere else, and that no beetle which 

 " makes a hum in flying can with propriety be said, as Dr. Johnson has 

 " interpreted the epithet in his Dictionary, " to be born amongst broken 

 " stones or pots." They also state, on the authority of Mr. MacLeay, that 

 " sharn is the common name of cow-dung in the north, and that there- 

 " fore Shakspeare probably wrote sham-born." In Antony and Cleo- 

 patra, when they are talking about the love of Lepidus for Csesar and 

 Antony, Agrippa says, " Both he loves," to which Enobarbus adds, 

 " They are his shards and he their beetle." Now as Shakspeare would 

 hardly call the same thing sharn in one place and shard in another, and 

 as it is clear that sharn, that is, cow-dung, in the mouth of Enobarbus 

 would be palpable nonsense, and shard as a beetle's birth-place in Mac- 

 beth, and its wing-covers in Antony and Cleopatra would be even a worse 

 jumble than " broken stones and pots," I am really almost bold enough 

 to doubt whether the idea of either dung or crockery ever entered his 

 imagination. The original meaning of the word shard, namely, " a 

 " broken piece of tile or earthern vessel" (see Bailey's Etymological 

 Dictionary) having, in all probability, before his time, suggested its ap- 

 plication to the wing-covers of beetles, in the same way as its Latin 

 synonym, testa, had been applied to the covering of shell-fish, &c.; for 

 there is not the shadow of an authority, I believe, for supposing that 

 shard, in its most extended sense, ever did or could mean dung : and to 

 substitute sharn for it, merely because it has that meaning in a part of the 

 kingdom with which he was unacquainted, appears to me to be rather a 

 greater liberty that " we petty men" ought to allow ourselves.* 



* On the meaning ofthe word *Aar«?, there is so much to be said, that we protest 

 against opening the pages of the Zoological Journal to the discussion of its pre- 

 cise value in every instance in which it has been used. That scales and dung 

 were both included in its significations, admits of no doubt. Shakspeare has 

 himself used it with at least two different meanings. In its primitive sense, that 

 given by Bailey, " a broken piece of tile or earthern vessel," (potsherd of the 

 English translations of the Bible,) it is used in Hamlet: the Priest says of Ophe- 

 lia, "Shards, flints, and pebbles, should be thrown on her." Here it can scarcely 



