276 SHAKESPEARE'S [scoRPION. 
from that fish, The seventh hath wings on the back, like 
the wings of a locust. ‘They are all little living creatures, 
not much differing in proportion from the great scarabee or 
horse-fly, except in the fashion of their tails. The coun- 
tenance is fawning, and virgin-like ; notwithstanding the fair 
face, it beareth a sharp sting in the tail. And of all other 
things they love fresh and clean linen, and next to their 
flesh put on this clean linen, as a man would put on a 
shirt. The manner of their breed or generation is double,— 
one way is by putrefaction, and the other by laying of 
eggs. When sea-crabs die, and their bodies are dried upon 
the earth, when the sun entereth into Cancer and Scorpio, 
out of the putrefaction thereof ariseth a Scorpion, and so 
out of the putrefied body of the crayfish burned, and out 
of the basilisk beaten into pieces and so putrefied. And 
about Estamenus in India there are abundance of Scorpions 
generated, only by corrupt rain-water standing in that place. 
And when one had planted the herb Basilisca [probably 
basil] on a wall in the room or place thereof he found 
two Scorpions. And some say that if a man chaw in his 
mouth fasting this herb basil, before he wash, and afterward 
lay the same abroad uncovered where no sun cometh at it 
for the space of seven nights, taking it in all the day-time, 
he shall at length find it transmitted into a Scorpion, with 
a tail of seven knots. Out of an herb Sissumbria putrefied, 
Scorpions are engendered. And out of the crocodile’s eggs 
do many times come Scorpions, which at their first 
egression do kill their dam that hatched them. The 
Lybians, who among other nations are most of all troubled 
with Scorpions, do use to set their beds far from any wall, 
and very high also from the floor, and they also set the 
feet of their beds in vessels of water. Then the Scorpions 
in their hatred to mankind climb up to the ceiling, and 
one of them taketh hold upon that place in the house or 
ceiling over the bed wherein they find the man asleep, and 
so hangeth thereby, putting out and stretching his sting to 
hurt him, but finding it too short, and not being able to. 
reach him, he suffereth another of his fellows to come and 
hang as fast by him as he doth upon his hold, and so that 
second giveth the wound,—and if that second be not able 
likewise, because of the distance, to come at the man, then 
they both admit a third to hang upon them, and so a 
