172 The Animal-Lore of Shakspeare's Time. 
the western towns and at Oxford. Plovers, golden and green, arrived 
at Taunton and Exeter; puetts at Winchester, Salisbury, Dorchester, 
Exeter, Oxford, Worcester, and Stafford; and a dozen oxen and kyne, 
being birds, [ruffs and reeves ?] appear once in July at Exeter.” 
Considering the difficulties of transport in the reign 
of Elizabeth, England appears to have been well supplied 
with commodities. The daily meal of even the nobles 
was probably simple, but on state occasions the bill of 
fare presented great variety. Christmas, one of the 
characters in the play by Thomas Nash, Summer s Last 
Will and Testament , printed 1600, exclaims— 
“ 0, it were a trim thing to send, as the Romans did, round about 
the world for provision for one banquet. I must rig ships to Samos for 
peacocks; to Paphos for pigeons; to Austria for oysters ; to Phasis for 
pheasants; to Arabia for phoenixes; to Meander for swans; to the 
Orcades for geese ; to Phrygia for woodcocks ; to Malta for cranes; to 
the Isle of Man for puffins; to Ambracia for chestnuts—and all for one 
feast. 
“ Will Summer. 0 sir, you need not : you may buy them at 
London better cheap.” ( Dodsley's Old Plays , vol. viii., ed. W. C. 
Hazlitt.) 
Bird-fowling has from time immemorial been man’s 
favourite pursuit, and great has been also the ingenuity 
displayed by him in devising methods for beguiling or 
destroying his feathered prey. Thomas Burton quaintly 
writes:— 
“ Fowling is more troublesome [than hawking], but al out as 
delightsome to some sorts of men, be it with guns, lime, nets, glades, 
ginnes, strings, baits, pitfalls, pipes, calls, stalking-horses, setting- 
dogges, coy-ducks, &c., or otherwise. Some much delight to take 
larks with day-nets, small birds with chaffe-net, plovers, partridges, 
herons, snite, &c. Henry the Third, King of Castile (as Mariana the 
Jesuite reports of him, lib. 3, cap. 7), was much affected with catching 
of quailes; and many gentlemen take a singular pleasure at morning 
and evening to go abroad with theyr quail-pipes, and will take any 
paines to satisfie their delight in that kinde.” ( Anatomy of Melan¬ 
choly , vol. i. p. 528.) 
