ANIMAL-LOKE OF SHAKESPEARE’s TIME. 
279 
I think it will be found full of attractiveness if for no other reason than 
this, that it gives such a definite idea of the kind of knowledge which 
prevailed in the 16th and 17th centuries regarding the Animal Kingdom. 
The book is full of quaint and curious information, and will afford a 
good deal of amusement to the general reader. It will, however, I 
think, prove most attractive to the literary man who has a bias 
towards archaeology. I propose in this paper to give a few specimens 
of the contents of this book, which will, perhaps, induce all interested 
who may read what follows, to consult the book itself. 
I commence my extracts with those relating to the sea-anemone, 
which the authoress thinks is the creature referred to by Du Bartas 
in the following lines;— 
“ And so the sponge-spye warily awakes 
The sponges’ dull sense, when repast it takes.” 
On this the commentator who wrote “ A learned Summary upon 
the Poeme,” (folio 1637) discourses as follows :— 
“ This is a little fish (as Plutarch saith in his treatise of the 
industry of living creatures) like unto a spider of the sea. He 
guardeth and governeth the spunge (called properly the hollow animal 
plant), which is not wholly without soule, neither without blood and 
sence; but (as divers other sea-animals) cleaveth to the rocks, and 
hath a proper motion to restrain her selfe outwardly; but to effect 
this, shee hath neede of the advertisement and friendship of another, 
because that (being rare, lither, and soft, by reason of her small vents, 
and empty for want of bloud, or rather want of sence, which is very 
dull) shee feeleth not when any good substance fit to be eaten, entreth 
into these holes, and void spaces, which the spunge there makes her 
feele and incontinently she closeth her selfe, and devoureth it.”— 
[Learned Summary, p, 224.) 
Miss Phipson calls this, not without reason, “ a long and involved 
note,” and I quite agree with her that the commentator “ does not 
succeed in making it quite clear what sort of creature is meant.” If 
it proves anything it proves conclusively that very little was known 
about sponges or sea-anemones in the year 1637. 
Michael Drayton, one of our own Warwickshire poets (born at 
Hartshill, between Atherston and Nuneaton, 1563), speaks of Coral in 
his Polyolbion, thus :— 
“ Coral of each kind, the black, the red, the white.” 
This substance was long a sore puzzle to naturalists, and its 
animal nature was not discovered till about a hundred and fifty years 
ago. Lord Bacon (as our authoress points out) says it is a submarine 
plant. And then proceeds :— 
“ It hath no leaves, it brancheth only when it is under water ; it 
is soft and green of colour ; but being brought into the air it becomes 
hard and shining red as we see. It is said also to have a white berry ; 
but we find it not brought over with the coral” [Nat. Hist., cent., viii.). 
