400 The Animal-Lore of Shakspeare’s Time . 
the opinion that the adjective shard-borne here refers to 
the hard outer coverings of the wings, and that the 
peculiarity of the insect’s flight would be more likely 
to attract the poet’s attention than would its place of 
nurture. 
“ These shards or wing cases,” he writes, “ are raised and expanded 
when the beetle flies, and by their concavity act like two parachutes 
in supporting him in the air. Hence the propriety and correctness 
of Shakspeare’s description, ‘ the shard-borne beetle,’ a description em¬ 
bodied in a single epithet.” 
Mr. Patterson refers any reader interested in this question 
to a long and interesting note published in the Zoological 
Journal, No. xviii. p. 147. 
Bellarius warns the aspiring princes, Guiderius and 
Aviragus, that security may best be found under a humble 
roof:— 
“ And often to our comfort, shall we find 
The sharded beetle in a safer hold 
Than is the full winged eagle ” 
(Cymbeline , iii. 3, 19.) 
A contrast is here drawn between the case-wings of the 
beetle, which, while they seem to impede its flight, 
protect it from harm, and the soft full-fledged pinions 
of the eagle, which too often carry the bird into 
danger. 
Enobarbus , commenting on the love expressed by 
Lepidus for Csesar and Antony , insinuates that this 
pretended devotion is but assumed as a means of self- 
aggrandizement. This “slight unmeritable man” seeks 
to rise by the aid of the superior strength of his 
colleagues:— 
“ They are his shards, and he their beetle.” 
(.Antony and Cleopatra , iii. 2, 19.) 
Other critics consider the word shard to refer to the 
