The pilchard closely resembles the herring, but is thicker and heavier, with larger scales.
In the same play, MARIA, seeing MALVOLIO coming, says:—
"Here comes the trout that must be caught with tickling."
Shakespeare, then, knew that fact so well known to poachers, and known also to many an American schoolboy, namely, that a trout likes to be tickled, or behaves as if he did, and that by gently tickling his sides and belly you can so mesmerize him, as it were, that he will allow you to get your hands in position to clasp him firmly. The British poacher takes the jack by the same tactics: he tickles the jack on the belly; the fish slowly rises in the water till it comes near the surface, when, the poacher having insinuated both hands under him, he is suddenly scooped out and thrown upon the land.
Indeed, Shakespeare seems to have known intimately the ways and habits of most of the wild creatures of Britain. He had the kind of knowledge of them that only the countryman has. In "As You Like It," JAQUES tells AMIENS:—
"I can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs."
Every gamekeeper, and every farmer for that matter, knows how destructive the weasel and its kind are to birds' eggs, and to the eggs of game-birds and of domestic fowls.
In "Love's Labor's Lost," BIRON says of BOYET:—
"This fellow picks up wit as pigeons peas."
Pigeons dp not pick up peas in this country, but they do in England, and are often very damaging to the farmer on that account. Shakespeare knew also the peculiar manner in which they feed their young,—a manner that has perhaps given rise to the expression "sucking dove." In "As You Like It" is this passage:—