ANIMAL AND PLANT LORE. 249 



stomach. If one is so unfortunate as to swallow a fly, the com- 

 forting remark very apt to be offered among country people 

 is : " Well, it'll come up ; a fly won't stay on the stomach, you 

 know." 



In central Illinois pills made by rolling up spider-webs into 

 small balls are recommended to be taken for ague. In connection 

 with this remedy it may be interesting to .notice that Burton, in 

 his Anatomy of Melancholy, tells how his mother, who was much 

 given to doctoring the poor of her parish, had great confidence in 

 the efficacy, in ague cases, of a spider inclosed in a nutshell 

 wrapped in silk, to be worn as an amulet by the patient. Burton 

 himself was at first incredulous, but after some observation he 

 came to believe that the amulet was beneficial. His own conclusion 

 was greatly strengthened upon his finding authority for this use of 

 the spider in the writings of Dioscorides, the famous botanist, who 

 lived in the early part of the Christian era,' and whose Materia 

 Medica, written in Greek, was for fifteen hundred years the high- 

 est medical authority. Carrying spiders upon the person as an 

 ague-cure must once have been somewhat popular in England. 

 Brand quotes from the diary of Elias Ashmole, April 11, 1681, the 

 following : " I took early in the morning a good dose of elixir and 

 hung three spiders about my neck, and they drove the ague away. 

 Deo gratias ! " Indeed, a vastly greater antiquity may be assigned 

 to this absurd practice, for the use of a spider's web or the creat- 

 ure itself as a specific for ague can at least be traced back to the 

 first century of our era ; for Pliny, in prescribing for this disease, 

 says : " It may be worth while to make trial whether the web of 

 the spider called i lycos' is of any use applied with the insect 

 itself to the temples and forehead in a compress covered with 

 resin and wax ; or the insect itself, attached to the body in a reed — 

 a form in which it is said to be highly beneficial for other fevers." 

 In the medical chapters of his Natural History Pliny again and 

 again speaks of the remedial virtues of spiders and their webs, 

 and, among multifarious prescriptions of this kind, advises the 

 application of a spider for three days as a cure for a boil, care 

 being taken not to mention the animal's name before applying it ; 

 also of cobwebs wet with oil and vinegar for fracture of the skull, 

 or of the web of a white spider for chapped lips. I have chanced 

 upon several other spider-web remedies in our own country be- 

 sides the ague-cure above mentioned. A Deerfield (Mass.) mode 

 of treatment for felons is merely to wind the finger about with 

 cobwebs. In northern New York cobwebs wet in hot water and 

 applied externally are recommended for the relief of pain in dis- 

 eases of the kidneys and bladder. The same application is used 

 in parts of Vermont for acute inflammation of the breast. 



A quaint custom is widely prevalent among country boys and 



