436 
The Animal-Lore of Shaksyeares Time. 
thing small and insignificant. The pedant Holofernes, in 
his assumed character of Judas, thus announces his atten¬ 
dant, Moth , who plays the part of Hercules :— 
“ Great Hercules is presented by this imp, 
Whose club kill’d Cerberus, that three-headed canis; 
And when he was a babe, a child, a shrimp, 
Thus did he strangle serpents in his manus.” 
(Love’s Labour’s Lost , v. 2, 592.) 
The Countess of Auvergne expresses her astonishment 
at the diminutive stature of Talbot , the scourge of 
France:— 
“ Is this the Talbot, so much fear’d abroad 
That with his name the mothers still their babes ? 
I see report is fabulous and false: 
I thought I should have seen some Hercules, 
A second Hector, for his grim aspect, 
And large proportion of his strong-knit limbs. 
Alas, this is a child, a silly dwarf! 
It cannot be this weak and writhled shrimp 
Should strike such terror to his enemies.” 
(1 Henry VI., ii. 3, 16.) 
“ Crab.—A fish in the sea that hath his head upon his brest, whereof 
Gesner discourseth amply in the fourth booke of his.. 
Crab. history of fishes, having gathered together in one body, 
all that which the ancients and modernes have said.” 
So writes the learned commentator on Du Bartas ( Learned' 
Summary , p. 211). 
“Crabs of the sea,” writes Muffett, “be of divers sorts; some 
smooth-crusted, and some rough-casted as it were and full of prickles,, 
called Echinometrx: the first sort hath the two formost clawes very 
big and long, the other wanteth them. Wherefore as they go side 
wise, so these move not themselves but round about like a spiral line.”' 
(Healths Improvement, p. 150.) 
Lyly informs us that “ the sea crab swimmeth alwayes 
against the streame; ” also that “ the filthy sow when 
she is sicke, eateth the sea crab, and is immediately 
