ous errors?—and the future naturalist pronounce their requiem in the words of Banquo, —
"The earth hath bubbles as the water has,
And these are of them."?
Adopting as my text-book the very excellent volume of Professor Bell, on British Reptiles, I commence with the Testudinata, or tortoises; two species of which, from having been thrown upon our coasts, hold a place in the British Fauna. Their occurrence is, however, so rare, that we may fairly presume Shakspeare had never seen either of these marine turtles in a living state. That he w r as familiar with the appearance of some species when dead, is more than probable; for among the contents of the apothecary's shop, described by Romeo, we have the tortoise mentioned in connexion with another reptile from tropical climates.
"And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
An alligator stuffed, and other skins
Of ill-shaped fishes."
That these aquatic animals were classed together by our bard under the common appellation of " fishes," will not to the naturalist seem surprising; even at this day, in common language, and in accordance with popular belief, the same term is applied to the Cetacea. If Shakspeare had ever seen any species alive in England, it was most probably the common land tortoise of the East,—Testudo Græca. The apathy and slow movements of this creature may have suggested the epithet which Prospero applies to Caliban —
"Come forth thou tortoise."—Tempest, Act i. Scene ii.
To the extreme longevity of the animal no reference is made, though it is one of the most remarkable circumstances connected with its history. One which lived at Peterborough could not have been less than two hundred and twenty years old; and seven bishops had worn the mitre during its sojourn there.[1] From facts such as these, which the naturalist records, the poet and the novelist draw "patines of bright gold." And hence we read with new delight the beautiful description in Bulwer's 'Last Days of Pompeii,' of a tortoise, which "had been the guest of the place for years before Glaucus purchased it; for years indeed which went beyond the memory of man, and to which tradition assigned an almost incredible date. The house had been built and rebuilt, its possessors had changed and fluctuated—generations had
- ↑ Vide note to Sir Wm. Jardine's edition of White's Selborne.
