These  grow  together,  to  defend  his  eyes  in  tempestuous  weather,  or
when  any  other  beast  that  is  his  enemy  sets  upon  him ;  nor  is  it
a  wonder,  that  he  hath  so  many  horns  though  they  be  very  troublesome
to  him ;  when  as  between  his  eyes,  the  space  of  his  fore&ead  is  15  or
20  foot*    (Page  226.)

Da  Bartas  is  scarcely  less  absurd : —

"  Our  fear-less  saylers,  in  far  voyages
(More  led  by  gain's  hope  than  their  compasses)
On  th'  Indian  shore,  have  somtime  noted  som
Whose  bodies  covered  two  broad  acres  room :
And  in  the  South-seas  they  have  also  seen
Some  like  high-topped  and  huge  armed  treen ;
And  other-som  whose  monstrous  backs  did  bear
Two  mighty  wheels  with  whirling  spokes,  that  were
Much  like  the  winged  and  wide  spreading  sayles
Of  any  winde-mill  turn'd  with  merry  gales."

(Divine  Weekes,  p.  40.)

The  whale  fishery,  so  important  a  branch  of  maritime
industry  and  adventure,  had  its  rise  in  the  time  of
Elizabeth.  Hakluyt,  1575,  reports  the  request  of  an
honest  merchant,  by  letter  to  a  friend  of  his,  to  be  adnsed
and  directed  in  the  course  of  killing  the  whale.  The  oil
was  the  only  produce  for  which  the  whale  was  at  first
yalaed.  Anderson,  in  his  Origin  of  Oommeroe,  1801,
traces  the  introduction  of  whalebone  into  England  to  an
accident  Some  English  ships  were  sent,  in  1593,  to  Gape
Breton  on  a  whaling  expedition.  At  the  entrance  of  the
Bay  of  Saint  Lawrence  the  sailors  found  no  whales,  but
came  to  a  store  of  800  whale  fins  which  had  been  left  on
an  island  by  some  Biscay  ship,  that  was  afterwards
wrecked.  Deeming  the  fins  of  some  value,  the  sailors
bronght  them  home,  and  we  have  soon  after  this  date  the


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94  ITis  Animal-Lore  of  ShaJcspeare^s  Time.
