Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/227

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OCCASIONAL NOTES.
205


And bid the main flood bate his usual height:
You may as well use question with the wolf,
Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb," &c.
Merchant of Venice. Act iv., Scene 1.

And again Antonio's friend Gratiano says of Shylock:—

"Thou almost mak'st me waver in my faith,
To bold opinion with Pythagoras,
That souls of animals infuse themselves
Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit
Govern 'd a Wolf, who, hanged for human slaughter,
Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,
And, whilst thou lay's in thy uuhallow'd dam,
Infus'd itself in thee; for thy desires
Are wolfish, bloody, starv'd and ravenous."
Id.

Shakspeare mentions the wolf upwards of fifty times, but it is unnecessary to give further quotations.

(To be continued.)

Correction of an Error.—At p. 167, for "the old belief in cows being suckled by hedgehogs," &c, read "sucked by hedgehogs."

OCCASIONAL NOTES.

Fauna of the Lake District.—With reference to a remark of Mr. W.A. Durnford (p. 121) as to the absence of Quail in the Lake District, I may say that some years ago I heard of a bevy of Quail being seen in September at Urswick, near Ulverston. They may possibly have been bred in the district, but I never heard of their having been seen except upon that occasion. In the Fylde District, between Lancaster and Preston, single birds were a few years ago not very uncommon, and on several occasions I have myself seen them when shooting in that district. Last autumn, however, on enquiring of the keeper, he told me he had not seen a single bird during the last two seasons. In the higher part of Furness black-game are by no means rare, though certainly not in anything like the number they are in the south of Scotland, perhaps owing to the very little grain grown in the hill parts of Furness. Grouse in some localities are fairly plentiful. The Dotterel used, at one time at all events, to breed on Saddleback (the next mountain to Skiddaw), and the