424 
The Animal-Lore of Shahspeares Time . 
has such a confirmed countenance. I saw him run after a gilded 
butterfly; and when he caught it, he let it go again; and after it 
again; and over and over he comes, and up again ; catched it again; 
or whether his fall enraged him, or how ’twas, he did so set his 
teeth and tear it; 0,1 warrant, how he mammocked it! 
Volumnia. One on ’s father’s moods.” ( Coriolanus , i. 3, 62.) 
Truly* " his father’s son! ” At the close of the play 
this childish episode is enacted on a larger scale. 
Coriolanus hotly pursues a painted glory; checked in 
his career and enraged by his fall, he would tear to 
pieces, in like ruthless fashion, the city he had professed 
to love. 
Muffett divides butterflies into day-butterflies and 
night-butterflies, or phalens. He gives illustrations and 
descriptions of several kinds, and is evidently at a loss to 
find words in which to paint their varied hues. He 
notices the occurrence of one of those blood showers that 
are frequently mentioned by medieval writers, and which 
were always held to foretell misfortune. 
“ In the year 1553,” he writes, “ as Sleidanus reports, a little before 
the death of Mauritius, the duke of Saxony, an infinite army of 
butterflies flew through great part of Germany, and did infect the 
grasse, herbs, houses and garments of men with bloudy drops, as 
though it had rained bloud.” (Page 974.) 
The word Moth generally implies some very small 
insect, and was probably not given to the 
larger species of night-butterflies. Muffett 
writes:— 
“ Moreover there are found in houses a certain sort of little silver 
coloured phalens marked with black spots, which fly to the candles 
called mothes in English, which eat linnen and woollen clothes, and 
lay eggs, of which come moths, and of the moths again these phalens ; 
they are said to come first of all from rose leaves and other herbs 
putrefying.” (Page 966.) 
Shakspeare gives the name Moth to one of the little 
fairies attendant on Titania , and to the young page of 
