98 
The Animal-Lore of ShaJcspeare’s Time. 
a dead carcase— wall signifying a whale and nar the 
carcase ( GhurchilVs Voyages , 701. i.). 
Baffin, the discoverer, writes to Sir John Wosten- 
holme:— 
“ As for the sea unicorne, it being a great fish, having a long horn 
or bone growing forth of his forehead or nostrill, such as Sir Martin 
Frobisher in his second voyage found one, in divers places we saw 
them, which if the home be of any good value, no doubt but many of 
them may be killed.” ( Purchas , vol. iii. p. 843.) 
The specimen found by Frobisher is described by him in 
Hakluyt’s Travels. It is a pity that the experiment 
recorded was not tried also on some non-poisonous 
insect. 
“ On this west shore,” he writes, “ we found a dead fish floating, 
which had in his nose a home streight and torquet, of length two yards 
lacking two ynches. Being broken in the top, here we might perceive 
it hollow, into the which some of our sailors, putting spiders, they 
presently died. I saw not the triall hereof, but it was reported unto 
me of a truth: by the vertue whereof we supposed it to be the sea 
unicorne.” ( Hakluyt , vol. iii. p. 59.) 
The appearance of the Porpoise was always 
Porpoise. ^. 0 f ore £ e ll a storm :— 
“ Come, porpoise, where’s Haterius ? 
His gout keeps him most miserably constant! 
Your dancing shows a tempest.” 
(Ben Jonson, Sejanus, v. 10.) 
Webster writes:— 
“ He lifts his nose like a porpus before a storm.” 
{Duchess of Malfy.) 
Shakspeare’s only reference to the porpoise is to the 
same effect. The fishermen in Pericles discuss the recent 
tempest, and one of them sagely observes:— 
“ Hay, master, said not I as much when I saw the porpus how he 
bounced and tumbled? They say they’re half fish, half flesh : a plague 
on them! they ne’er come but I look to be washed ” (ii. 1, 24). 
