448 
The Animal-Lore of Shalcspeare’s Time. 
night they flete to the water syde and there they receyve the hevenly 
dewe, where-throughe there groweth in them a costly margaret or orient 
perle, and they flete a great many togeder and he that knoweth the 
water best gothe before and ledeth the other, and whan he is taken, 
all the other scater a brode, and geteth them away.” (Babees Booh , 
p. 16.) 
Muffett has little to say in praise of the English 
mussel as an article of diet, but recommends the “ lily- 
white mussel ” found on the coast of Holland. 
Snail. 
“ Fool. I can tell why a Snail has a house. 
Lear. Why? 
Fool. Why, to put his head in; not to give it away to his 
daughters, and leave his horns without a case.” 
(. Lear , i. 5, 29.) 
Shakspeare has many references to the timid garden 
snail:— 
“ Love’s feeling is more soft and sensible 
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails.” 
(Love’s Labour’s Lost , iv. 3, 337.) 
“ Or, as the snail, whose tender horns being hit. 
Shrinks backward in his shelly cave with pain, 
And there, all smother’d up, in shade doth sit, 
Long after fearing to creep forth again.” 
( Venus and Adonis , 1. 1033.) 
Menenius compares the enemy of Rome to this cautious- 
but destructive intruder:— 
“ ’Tis Aufidius, 
Who, hearing of our Marcius’ banishment, 
Thrusts forth his horns again into the world; 
Which were inshell’d when Marcius stood for Rome, 
And durst not once peep out.” 
( Coriolanus , iv. 6, 43.) 
Ben Jonson writes:— 
“We have no shift of faces, no cleft tongues, 
No soft and glutinous bodies, that can stick 
Like snails on painted walls ; or, on our breasts, 
Creep up, to fall from that proud height to which 
We did by slavery, not by service climb.” 
(Sejanus, i. 1.) 
