198 Dr. Heiiieken's Entomological Notices. 



In the last (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 elytra, 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 Toilet; 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 Toilet 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, &c. " 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 with in A true 

 report of Capteine Frobisher his last voyage, &c., where it is said in the 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 saj's, " appear to mean only the hard 

 " scales of dried cow-dung." 



That it was unnecessary for the purpose of obtaining the signification dung 

 to change the orthography from share? to shar??, 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, " Hf^w 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 " Scarabaeus stercorarius vel fimarius,. 

 " a dung Beetle, or Sharnhug" of Merrett's Pinax, page 201.— E. T. B. 



