THE ANIMAL-LORE 
OF 
SHAKSPEARE’S TIME. 
INTRODUCTION. 
Few subjects have more frequently occupied the attention 
of man than that of his own relation to the animal life 
around him. The classic writers delighted to note the 
various points of contact and the joint ownership of 
qualities which man and animals possessed. In the time 
of Shakspeare this question of kinship seems to have 
been studied with renewed interest. Montaigne labours 
long and earnestly to prove the “ equality and corre¬ 
spondence betwixt us and the beasts.” In Essay liv. he 
refuses to allow to man the sole possession of any faculty, 
or to debase the intelligence of animals with the name of 
instinct. He draws illustrations of the employment of 
such mental attributes as prudence, ingenuity, foresight, 
memory, from many beasts and birds. 
“ Why,” he writes, “ does the spider make her web streighter in 
one place and slacker in another ? why now make one sort of knot, 
and then another, if she has not deliberation, thought, and conclusion? 
We sufficiently discover in most of their works how much animals 
excel us, and how unable our art is to imitate them. We see, never- 
B 
