That the weasel sucks eggs, and is partial to such fare, is very generally admitted. Shakespeare alludes to the fact again in As You Like It (Act ii. Sc. 5), where Jaques says:—“I can suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs.” But whether the weasel has ever been found in the same situation or at such an altitude as the eagle, is not so certain. A near relative of the weasel, however, namely, a marten-cat, was once found in an eagle’s nest. “The forester, having reason to think that the bird was sitting hard, peeped over the cliff into the
eyrie. To his amazement, a marten was suckling her kittens in comfortable enjoyment.”[30]
The allusion above made to the “princely eggs,” reminds us of the princely bird which laid them, and those who have read the works of Shakespeare—and who has not?—must doubtless remember the beautiful simile uttered by Warwick when dying on the field of Barnet:—
“Thus yields the cedar to the axe’s edge,
Whose arms gave shelter to the princely eagle.”
Henry VI. Part III. Act v. Sc. 2.
The conscious superiority of the eagle is depicted by Tamora, who tells us:—
“The eagle suffers little birds to sing,
And is not careful what they mean thereby,
Knowing that with the shadow of his wing