37 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that he had known of cow-hairs turning into short, thread-like worms. 

 He probably had seen either young specimens of Gordius or some other 

 nematode worm in the barn-yard and also seen plenty of loose hair 

 lying about and connected the two facts as cause and effect. 



From the time when there was an unwavering belief in the exist- 

 ence of a jewel in a toad's head and faith in its great medical virtues 

 to the present day, a good many queer notions have been propagated 

 about toads and frogs. Farmers' boys from Maine to Indiana are often 

 cautious about flinging stones at either toads or frogs, lest their death 

 should " make the cows give bloody milk." Throughout New Eng- 

 land the killing of a barn-swallow is believed to have the same effect. 

 East and West, North and South, the common name of our fresh-water 

 confervcz, " frog-spittle," very generally bears a literal meaning to the 

 country boy or girl as well as to many grown-up persons. The teacher 

 in country schools will not always find it easy to convince her pupils 

 that this floating green scum is a mass of growing plants. It is a very 

 common belief that the tails of tadpoles literally " drop off " as might 

 a loose finger-nail. Boys appreciate sufficiently a frog's strong hold 

 on life to say " he has seven lives." I have met several children who 

 thought that the fungi known as " toad-stools " derived their name 

 from their being an actual resting-place or shelter for toads. I do not, 

 however, know that this idea has any extended range. Speaking of 

 toads, I wonder if the wide-spread but erroneous belief, that the touch 

 of a toad will produce warts, first came about from the accidental dis- 

 covery that the secretion of the glands of the skin is very acrid ? This 

 might easily have been guessed from the alacrity with which a dog 

 will drop a toad if he has by chance bitten one. But is it not more 

 likely that the fallacy regarding the production of warts is a result of 

 some such theory as the "doctrine of signatures"? This, you remem- 

 ber, led physicians, in the infancy of medicine, to adopt as remedies 

 many herbs quite destitute of curative powers merely because of some 

 external characteristic which, so the doctrine supposed, indicated the 

 disease to be cured by the use of the several plants thus employed. 

 For this and no other reason the little eyebright (Euphrasia officinalis) 

 was enrolled in the early materia medica as a panacea for diseases of 

 the eye. The rough coat of the toad would naturally suggest the idea 

 of warts, and a single suggestion very easily grows into a theory, and 

 a theory into a belief. 



Some reputed remedies for warts may be in place just here. In 

 Southern Ohio the children believe that the juice of the Osage orange 

 (Madura aurantiaca) will remove these disagreeable excrescences. In 

 other parts of the same State the juice of the tiny creeping " milk- 

 weed " (Euphorbia maculata or E. humistrata) is said to be a certain 

 cure for warts. This latter notion I also find common in many places 

 both east and west of Ohio ; while in Eastern Massachusetts the same 

 curative quality is thought to be possessed by the milky juice of the 



