THE LAPWING. 221 



are very familiar. Like the partridge and some other 

 birds, it has a curious habit of trying to draw intruders 

 away from its nest or young by fluttering along the 

 ground in an opposite direction, or by feigning lameness, 

 or uttering melancholy cries at a distance : — 



" Far from her nest the lapwing cries away." 



Comedy of Errors, Act iv. Sc. 2. 



Allusions to this habit are not unfrequent in our older 

 poets. Lily, in his " Campaspe," 1584, says: — 



" You resemble the lapwing, who crieth most where her 

 nest is not." 



So also Greene, in the second part of his " Coney 

 Catching," 1592: — 



" But again to our priggers, who, as before 

 I said, cry with the lapwing farthest from her nest." 



And in Ben Jonson's Underwoods we are told, — 



" Where he that knows will like a lapwing flie, 

 Farre from the nest, and so himselfe belie." 



Hence the phrase " to seem the lapwing," which occurs in 

 Measure for Measure, Act i. Sc. 4. So also in Much Ado 

 about Nothing, — 



" For look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs, 

 Close by the ground, to hear our conference." 



Act iii. Sc. 1. 



