18 SHAKESPEARE'’S [ ss. 
that be of other nations, what nation soever it be. Also 
Aristotle saith that in a certain mountain scorpions grieve 
no strangers; but they sting and slay men of the country. 
Bartholomew (Berthelet), bk. xviii. § 9. 
Asp’s sting is not curable, but only with the water of a 
stone washed, which they take out of the sepulchre of an 
ancient king. Batman's addition to Bartholomew, loc. cit. 
In Egypt so great is the reverence they bear to Asps, that 
if any in the house have need to rise in the night-time out 
of their beds, they first of all give out a sign by knacking 
of the fingers, lest they should harm the Asp, and so provoke 
it against them; at the hearing whereof, all the Asps get 
them to their holes and lodgings, till the person stirring be 
laid again in his bed. _A domestical Asp had young ones ; 
in her absence one of her young ones killed a child in the 
house; when the old one came again according to her 
custom to seek her meat, the killed child was laid forth, and 
so she understood the harm; then went she and killed that 
young one, and never more appeared in that house. Also 
there was an Asp that fell in love with a little boy that 
kept geese, whose love to the said boy was so fervent, 
that the male of the said Asp grew jealous thereof. Where- 
upon one day as he lay asleep, [he] set upon him to kill 
him, but the other seeing the danger of her love, awaked and 
delivered him. All the Asps of Nilus do thirty days before 
the. flood remove themselves and their young ones into the 
mountains, and this is done yearly, once at the least. A 
man carrying a bottle of vinegar was bitten by an Asp, 
whiles by chance he trod thereupon, but as long as he 
bore the vinegar and did not set it down, he felt no pain 
thereby, but as often as to ease himself he set the bottle 
out of his hand, he felt torment by the poison. 
Topsell, “ History of Serpents,” pp. 633-6, 
ASS. 
Tue Ass is a simple beast and a slow, and therefore soon 
overcome and subject to man’s service. The elder the Ass 
is, the fouler he waxeth from day to day, and hairy and 
rough, and is a melancholic beast, that is cold and dry, 
