Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive c10.213

c10.213

1596.—"Once he would needs defend a rat to be animal rationale . . . because she eate and gnawd his bookes . . . . And the more to confirme it, because everie one laught at him . . . . the next rat he seaz'd on hee made an anatomie of, and read a lecture of 3 dayes long upon everie artire or musckle, and after hanged her over his head in his studie in stead of an apothecarie's crocodile or dride Alligatur."—*T. Nashe's 'Have with you to Saffron Walden,' Repr. in J. Payne Collier's Misc. Tracts, p. 72.*