EARLY NATURAL HISTORY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 729, 31 July 1929, Page 6

EARLY NATURAL HISTORY

SCIENCE IN SHAKESPEARE’S l TIME CURIOUS SUPERSTITIONS The curious beliefs of the people j of the Elizabethan Age regarding | natural history were described by Professor J. C. Sperrin-Johnson in a lecture included in the course on “The Life and Times of Shakespeare,” given at the university last evening. “The Elizabethan drama,” said Professor Sperrin-Johnson, “reflects many characteristics of the period and an interesting anthology can he made dealing with allusions to natural history. In the first place, we find an indication of the actual scientific knowledge of the time, and in the second, many of the references are valuable for the study of folk lore. Shakespeare’s works, especially, are a mine of information and the reader is enchanted with the happy treatment of natural history themes.” The sciences of chemistry, botany, geology and astronomy were at an elementary stage at the time, according to the lecturer, while the little zoology that was known was based on the work of such ancient writers as Pliny, Hippocrates and Aristotle, and on the garbled tales of travellers. Shakespeare made many references to trees and flowers and to the garden and the orchard. He spent most of his boyhood in the country and could thus observe at first-hand the life going on about him. Many of the names mentioned in his plays had today their counterparts, and even the cabbage and the potato were known in England by the end of the 16th century. The professor quoted from the works of several early writers to indicate the extent of the zoological knowledge of the time and showed lantern slides of the illustrations in their books. Several of the old superstitions, particularly those concerning the appetite of the ostrich, have come down to us and are still aliveand flourishing, lie said. Many slides were shown illustrating the curious animals that travellers claimed to have seen and passages were quoted in which they were described.