446 The Animal-Lore of Shakspeare 9 s Time. 
Stay ; give me drink. Hamlet, this pearl is thine; 
, Here’s to thy health.” 
{Hamlet, v. 2, 282.) 
Shakspeare has many references to this beautiful and 
valuable ornament. Antony sends to his Egyptian queen 
a precious gift: Alexas, who bears the offering, reports :— 
“ Last thing he did, dear queen, 
He kiss’d,—the last of many doubled kisses,— 
This orient pearl. His speech sticks in my heart. 
Gleo. Mine ear must pluck it thence. 
Alex. 1 Good friend,’ quoth he, 
e Say, The firm Koman to great Egypt sends 
This treasure of an oyster; at whose foot. 
To mend the petty present, I will piece 
Her opulent throne with kingdoms; all the East, 
Say thou, shall call her mistress.’ ” 
{Antony and Cleopatra , i. 5, 39.) 
Luke , in Massinger’s City Madam , for years a poor 
dependant in his brother’s household, suddenly becomes 
possessed of boundless wealth: he describes in glowing 
language his newly acquired treasures. Gold and silver 
lay in glittering heaps about the room, and dazzled his 
sight by their splendour; diamonds shot forth their beams 
from the caskets that contained them,— 
“ And made the place 
Heaven’s abstract, or epitome !—rubies, sapphires, 
And ropes of orient pearl, these seen, I could not 
But look on with contempt.” 
( City Madam , iii. 3.) 
The history of the oyster, as told by our forefathers, is 
enlivened by a touch of the marvellous. One William 
Finch, a merchant, in his description of the coast of Sierra 
Leone, in the year 1607, gravely informs us that the 
oyster is the fruit of a tree : — 
“ There grow likewise within the bayes great store of oysters on 
trees, resembling willowes in forme, but the leafe broad and of thick- 
