4 o 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



night of the waning moon the actions of crows and starlings evince a sad disre- 

 gard of religious duties, but "burying black briony in the four corners of a field 

 will secure it against the ravages of the most impious bird." Need we wonder 

 that the Kiddles of that age could credit the miracles of St. Polycarp ? 



The Biter bitten. " Intellectual presence of mind," says Lavater, 



" favors the practice of dissimulation, as well as the art of repartee." This latter 

 gift seems to be a characteristic talent of the Semitic race. Al-Mansour, the 

 second Abbasside Caliph, was importuned to commute the sentence of a rebellious 

 governor of Morocco, on the ground that the followers of the rebel revered him 

 as a saint and a prophet. "That's no excuse," said the Caliph, "for, if he is 

 endowed with the gift of prescience, he must have foreseen that I am going to 

 hang him to-morrow." 



During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the neglected fields of North- 

 ern Spain formed a humiliating contrast with the flourishing huertas of the 

 Moorish provinces ; yet Alfonso IV of Aragon tried to demonstrate the supe- 

 riority of his countrymen from this very difference. " In our country men handle 

 the sword and clowns the spade," he told the Moorish embassador ; " my cavaliers 

 are too proud to meddle with agriculture." "And yet sixty thousand of these 

 hidalgos have condescended to fertilize the fields of Xeres," observed the Morisco. 



But, of all biters bitten, the most astonished was, perhaps, the Jesuit Gorres, 

 who insulted meek Moses Mendelssohn by the question, "how it came that in all 

 countries of Christendom the Hebrews were dreaded as cheats?" "No won- 

 der," replied the philosopher, with his blandest smile, "since you have all been 

 so amazingly cheated by one of oar people" 



American Stock- Breeding is thus magnified by President Francis A. 



Walker, writing in the "Princeton Eeview " : "The trotting horse we have 

 created, certainly the most useful variety of the equine species, and we have im- 

 proved that variety in a degree unprecedented in natural history. - Two genera- 

 tions ago the trotting of a mile in two minutes forty seconds was so rare as to 

 give rise to a proverbial phrase indicating something extraordinary ; it is now a 

 common occurrence. ' But a few years ago,' wrote Professor Brewer, in 1876, 

 'the speed of a mile in 2*30 was unheard of; now, perhaps, five or six hundred 

 horses are known to have trotted a mile in that time.' The number is to-day, 

 perhaps, nearer one thousand than five hundred. Steadily onward have Ameri- 

 can horse-raisers pressed the limit of mile-speed, till, within the last three sea- 

 sons, the amazing figures 2'10 have been reached by one trotter and closely 

 approached by another." 



About 1800 we began to import, in considerable numbers, the favorite 



English cattle, the short-horn. The first American short-horn herd-book was 

 published in 1846. In 1873 a sale of short-horn cattle took place in Western 

 New York, at which a herd of 109 head were sold for a total sum of $382,000 

 one animal, a cow, bringing $40,600 ; another, a calf five months old, $27,000; 

 both for the English market. To-day Devons and short-horns are freely ex- 

 ported from New York and Boston to England, to improve the native stock. 



The Society of Dilettanti was formed one hundred and fifty years ago, 



by a number of gentlemen who had traveled in Italy and enjoyed its treasures 

 of antiquity and art, for social intercourse and aesthetic improvement. English- 

 men most distinguished in politics and literature have been among its members. 

 Originally it was indispensable that a candidate for admission should have been 



