242 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ing that one must not swallow a hair of a cat, since if swallowed 

 it will develop into a kitten within its hapless host. 



From southern Illinois comes the notion that a felon may be 

 cured by simply putting on, dry, three hairs from the tip of a 

 black cat's tail. It would be so very easy a matter to test the effi- 

 cacy of this remedy that it is almost incredible that experiment 

 has not before now dissipated such an absurd belief even from 

 the most credulous mind. Possibly there is some relation be- 

 tween this prescription and a saying found in central Maine that 

 in the tip of every cat's tail are three hairs of the devil. All are 

 aware of the ease with which in cold, dry weather, the fur of a 

 cat is electrified by friction ; but who would imagine that any 

 connection could be conjectured between this phenomenon and 

 lightning ? There is, however, a New England superstition, of 

 greater or less extent, that it is very unsafe to tolerate the pres- 

 ence of a cat during a thunder-storm. I know of one lady in Sa- 

 lem, Mass., who never allows her cat to remain in the living- 

 rooms of the house when a thunder-storm is threatened. No 

 sooner do dark clouds begin to gather than Tabby is relegated to 

 the cellar for fear " she may draw the lightning." The reasonable- 

 ness of this precaution is quite worthy of the superstition which 

 occasions it. The grease tried out by roasting a perfectly black 

 cat is recommended in northern Ohio as a curative ointment in 

 any disease of the skin. From central Maine came the preposter- 

 ous notion that consumption may be cured by cooking a black 

 dog (one without a white hair) and eating the fat on bread. In 

 the same region a much-prized unguent for pimples, roughened 

 skin, or any other cutaneous disturbance, is the grease of a 

 weasel. It would certainly seem that but a trifling quantity of 

 fat could be obtained from one of these slender creatures. Pliny 

 states that the gall of one kind of weasel (probably the ferret) is 

 a most efficacious remedy for the sting of an asp ; also that the 

 flesh of another species, preserved in salt, is a cure for the bites of 

 serpents. The dried flesh of the weasel was often kept by the an- 

 cient Romans to be given in small quantities as an antidote for 

 any narcotic poison. Indeed, great remedial powers were, accord- 

 ing to Pliny, attributed by his contemporaries to these animals, 

 their ashes being often kept to form an important ingredient in 

 some of the grewsome compounds that figured so largely in 

 Roman therapeutics. Most Aryan mythologies abound in tales of 

 the supernatural wisdom and cunning of the weasel. Phaedrus 

 and iEsop both introduced it into their fables; and Aristotle, in 

 his History of Animals, among other attributes ascribes to it 

 enough reasoning foresight to eat the herb rue before attacking 

 serpents. The Greeks supposed .the odor of this plant to be ob- 

 noxious to these reptiles, and credited their wily adversary with a 



