of Reynard the Foxe" (chap. vi.), we are
told how "the king called for Sir Tibert, the cat, and said to him, Sir
Tibert, you shall go to Reynard, and summon him the second time."[385] A
popular term for a wild cat was "cat-o'-mountain," an expression[386]
borrowed from the Spaniards, who call the wild cat "gato-montes." In the
"Merry Wives of Windsor" (ii. 2), Falstaff says of Pistol, "Your
cat-a-mountain looks."

[384] Dyce's "Glossary to Shakespeare," p. 466.

[385] From Tibert, Tib was also a common name for a cat.

[386] Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 41.

The word cat was used as a term of contempt, as in "The Tempest" (ii. 1)
and "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (iii. 2), where Lysander says, "Hang
off, thou cat." Once more, too, in "Coriolanus" (iv. 2), we find it in
the same sense:

"'Twas you incensed the rabble;
Cats, that can judge as fitly of his worth,
As I can of those mysteries which heaven
Will not have earth to know."

A gib, or a gib cat, is an old male cat[387]--gib being the contraction
of Gilbert,[388] and is, says Nares, an expression exactly analogous to
that of jackass.[389] Tom-cat is now the usual term. The word was
certainly not bestowed upon a cat early in life, as is evident from the
melancholy character ascribed to it in Shakespeare's allusion in "1
Henry IV." (i. 2): "I am as melancholy as a gib cat." Ray gives "as
melancholy as a gib'd [a corruption of gib] cat." The term occurs again
in "Hamlet" (iii. 4). It is improperly applied to a female by Beaumont
and Fletcher, in the "Scornful Lady" (v. 1): "Bring out the cat-hounds!
I'll make you take a tree, whore; then with my tiller bring down your
gib-ship, and then have you cased and hung up in the warren."

[387] Dyce's "Glossary," p. 183.

[388] A gibbe (an old male cat), Macou, Cotgrave's "French and
English Dictionary."

[389] "Glossary," vol. i. p. 360.

_Chameleon._ This animal was popularly believed to feed on air, a notion
which Sir Thomas Browne[390] has carefully discussed. He has assigned,
among other grounds for this vulgar opinion, its power of abstinence,
and its faculty of self-inflation. It lives on insects, which it catches
by its long, gluey tongue, and crushes between its jaws. It has been
ascertained by careful experiment that the chameleon can live without
eating for four months. It can inflate not only its lungs, but its whole
body, includi