166 
The Animal-Lore of Shalcspeare’s Time. 
Don Gonzalo writes further:— 
“ There is another kinde of beaste seene in the firme land [South 
America] which seemeth very strange and marveilous 
rmadillo. ^ ^he Christian men to behold, and much differing 
from all other beasts which have beene seene in other parts of the 
world : these beasts are called Bardati, and are foure footed, having 
their taile and all the rest of their bodies covered onely with a 
skin like to a barbed horse, or the checkered skin of a lisart or cro¬ 
codile, of colour betweene while and russet, inclining somewhat more 
to white. And if these beasts had ever beene seene in these parts of 
the world where the first barbed horses had their original, no man 
would judge but that the forme and fashion of the coperture of horses 
furnished for the warres, was first devised by the sight of these beasts.” 
(Purchas , vol. iii. p. 977). 
Joseph Acosta, in the same work, informs ns that in 
Pern— 
“ there bee little beasts which goe through the woods, called Arma¬ 
dillos, by reason of the defence they have, hiding themselves within 
their scales, and opening when they list: I have eaten of them, and 
doe not hold it for meate of any great worth; but the flesh of the 
yguanas is a better meate, but more horrible to the eye: for they are 
like to the very lizardes of Spaine, although they bee of a doubtfull 
kinde, for they goe to the water, and comming to land, they climbe 
the trees upon the bankes, and as they cast themselves from the trees 
into the water the boates watch underneath to receive them.” 
Topsell gives an account of two extraordinary animals, 
the latter of which corresponds to the armadillo, with the 
exception of the duck-like bill. 
“ Of the Tatus, or Guinean Beast,” he writes, “ this is a foure-footed 
strange beast, which Bellonius saith, he found in Turchia, among the 
mountebankes and apothicaries. It is brought for the most part out 
of the new-found world, and out of Guinia, and may therefore be safely 
conveyed into those parts, because it is naturally covered with a harde 
shell, devided and interlined like the fins of fishes, outwardly seeming 
buckled to the backe like coat-armor, with which the beast draweth 
up his body as a hedghog doth within his prickled skin, and therefore 
I take it to be a Brasilian hedghog. The merchants as I have heard 
and cittizens of London keepe off with these their garden wormes. . . . 
There is another beast that may bee compared to this, whereof Car- 
dianus writeth, and he calleth the name of it Aiochtochth. It is a 
