Again, in the tricking of Malvolio, as the steward picks up the letter, Fabian, from the lurking-place where Sir Toby and he are watching every movement, exclaims Now is the woodcock near the gin.[123] [Illustration: THE LAPWING] [Sidenote: _The Pheasant and Partridge_] The PHEASANT is only once mentioned by Shakespeare, and in a ludicrous way. When the Shepherd and the Clown in _The Winter’s Tale_ are accosted by Autolycus on their errand to the king, the following conversation ensues: _Aut._ I command thee to open thy affair. _Shep._ My business, sir, is to the king. _Aut._ What advocate hast thou to him? _Shep._ I know not, an’t like you. _Clown_ [_aside_] Advocate’s the court-word for a pheasant: say you have none―― _Shep._ None, sir; I have no pheasant, cock nor hen. _Aut._ How blessed are we that are not simple men! Yet nature might have made me as these are; Therefore I will not disdain.[124] We find the PARTRIDGE referred to twice in the dramas, once as part of the game in a puttock’s nest, in the passage already cited, and the second time in the encounter of wit between Beatrice and Benedick at the masked ball when she, pretending not to recognise him, heaps all manner of ridicule upon him, ending with the taunt that if he should hear what she has been saying about him, He’ll but break a comparison or two on me; which peradventure not marked or not laughed at, strikes him into melancholy; and there’s a partridge wing saved, for the fool will eat no supper that night.[125] The SNIPE is only once mentioned and the name is used as a contemptuous epithet. Iago, as he soliloquises after an interview with the “gulled gentleman” Rodrigo, affirms I mine own gain’d knowledge should profane If I would time expend with such a snipe, But for my sport and profit.[126] [Sidenote: _The Quail and Lapwing_] The QUAIL is likewise referred to in two of the Plays dealing with Greek and Roman history. Antony, comparing his chances in life with Octavius Caesar’s, confesses to himself The very dice obey him: if we draw lots he speeds; His cocks do win the battle still of mine; His quails ever beat mine, inhoop’d, at odds.[127] Thersites speaks thus slightingly of a great warrior: Here’s Agamemnon, an honest fellow enough, and one that loves quails; but he has not so much brain as ear-wax.[128] In both these quotations the reference seems to be to a practice of training quails to fight after the manner of cock-fighting. The allusions to the LAPWING indicate that the dramatist was acquainted with some of the characteristics of the bird. The tactics of the male bird to entice a passer-by away from his nest are expressed in the line Far from her nest the lapwing cries away.[129] When the plot is laid to get Beatrice to accept Benedick as her lover, and the plotters see her “couched in the woodbine coverture,” Hero urges: