2 4 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ANIMAL AND PLANT LORE. 



By Mrs. FANNY D. BERGEN. 

 III. 



A FEW of the many groundless beliefs concerning both the 

 useful and the injurious powers of certain reptiles and 

 batrachians have been already enumerated, but such fictions are 

 by no means confined to these uncanny -looking tribes of animals. 

 Indeed, it would seem as if such a knowledge of the real nature 

 of the commonest animals and plants as might readily be acquired 

 by even untrained observers had been altogether supplanted by 

 chimerical delusions which are incredibly hard to eradicate, for, 

 as Dasent remarks, " popular tradition is tough." 



Among the ancient Egyptians, cats were highly revered, sacri- 

 fices even being offered them and temples built for them, and 

 after death many were preserved as mummies. Travelers state 

 that the modern Persians, too, greatly esteem the domestic cat. 

 But from very early times, in most countries where the cat has 

 been kept as a domestic animal, she seems to have been an object 

 of suspicion. Cats have been the reputed familiars of witches ; 

 have at other times been supposed to incarnate witches, or even 

 the father of witches, the devil himself. It is, .then, natural 

 enough that cats should figure rather prominently in the list of 

 animals credited with exceptional powers for good and evil. 

 Remnants of many ancient beliefs concerning such powers are 

 still found — some among us, and more, it may be, in older coun- 

 tries. A trustworthy old woman whose early life was spent near 

 Cork, Ireland, tells me that it is well known that in old times cats 

 could sometimes speak, and that she herself remembers one in- 

 stance in her girlhood of a cat speaking with a human voice. " It 

 was on an oiland aff the coast of Oireland," said she, in her queer 

 mixture of the brogue and Yankee dialect, " a bit o' land all sur- 

 rounded with water. There was a woman was cardin' wool, and 

 after she carded it she put it into her sieve,* and then her cat 

 came along and pulled it about, and she quished him away, and 

 whin she did that he said, ' Ye'd better lave this oiland, or ye'll be 

 sorry.' And nixt day there came up a very high tide, and swipt 

 away ivery livin' thing on the oiland. I suppose the cat just 

 wanted an excuse for spakin' whin he tangled up the woman's 

 wool. Ah, cats are very knowin' ! and there's great virtue in a 

 cat's blood, 'specially that of a black cat, or its skin, aither." Al- 



* A kind of wicb hoop, with the bottom covered with tanned sheepskin, and used to hold 

 the carded wool. 



