466 
The Animal-Lore of Shakspeare’s Time. 
greatnesse, roughnesse, and feete are like a lyons, his face and eares- 
like unto a mans [even to the carefully trimmed moustachios] his eies 
gray, of colour red, his tail like a scorpion of the earth, armed with 
a sting, casting forth sharp pointed quils, his voice like the voice of a 
small trumpet or pipe, being in course as swift as a hart. . . . Al¬ 
though India be full of divers ravening beastes, yet none of them 
are stiled with the title andropojphagi, that is to say, men eaters 
except onely this mantichora.” (Page 442.) 
Topsell sets this remarkable beast down as a kind of 
hyena, which however it does not resemble in one single 
particular. If Othello had any adventures to tell of 
encounters with such anthropophagi as these mantichors 
no wonder that Desdemona preferred listening to his 
traveller’s tales to attending to her domestic duties. 
“ Sebastian . Now I will believe 
Phceni That there are unicorns, that in Arabia 
* There is one tree, the Phoenix’ throne, one phoenix 
At this hour reigning there.” 
{Tempest, iii. 3, 20.) 
Ancient writers appear to have quite exhausted their 
imagination in depicting the splendid appearance and 
attributes of the phoenix. This remarkable bird is thus 
described by Pliny : — 
“ By report he is as big as an eagle, in colour yellow, and bright as- 
gold, namely all about the neck, the rest of the bodie a deepe red 
purple ; the taile azure blue, intermingled with feathers among of rose 
carnation colour: and the head bravely adorned with a crest and 
pennache finely wrought, having a tuft and plume thereupon right 
faire and goodly to be seene.” ( Holland's PUnie , book x. c. 2.) 
Du Bartas simply paraphrases this passage when he 
tells us that— 
“ The heav’nly phoenix first began to frame 
The earthly phoenix, and adorn’d the same 
With such a plume, that Phoebus, circuiting 
From Fez to Cairo, sees no fairer thing; 
Such form, such feathers, and such fate he gave her. 
That fruitfull nature breedeth nothing braver: 
