232 
THE WOODCOCK’S HEAD. 
This trap, being commonly used now-a-days for rats, is 
probably too well known to need a description here. 
“ So strives the woodcock with the gin.” 
Henry VI. Part III. Act i. Sc. 4. 
Under the head of “ Wild-P'owl ” we shall have occasion, 
in a subsequent chapter, to allude to the opinion of 
Pythagoras on the transmigration of souls, and to the 
discussion on this subject in Twelfth Night , when the 
clown portentously observes to Malvolio,— 
“ Fear to kill a woodcock, lest thou dispossess the soul 
of thy grandam. Fare thee well .”—Twelfth Night , Act iv. 
Sc. 2. 
The “ woodcock’s head” in Shakespeare’s day,on account 
of its shape, was a fashionable term for a tobacco-pipe.* 
“ Those who loved smoking sat on the stage-stools, with 
their three sorts of tobacco, and their lights by them, 
handing matches on the point of their swords, or sending 
out their pages for real Trinidado. They actually practised 
smoking under professors who taught them tricks ; and 
the intelligence offices were not more frequented, no, nor 
the pretty seamstresses’ shops at the Exchange, than the 
new tobacco office.”-f- 
It is somewhat remarkable that while Shakespeare’s 
contemporary, Ben Jonson, has founded whole scenes upon 
# Every Man Out of his Humour , Act iii. Sc. 3. 
t Thornbury, “Shakespeare’s England,” vol. i. pp. 169, 170. 
