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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tcr they have constructed, the owl is teth- 

 ered upon a branch, with chain-room enough 

 to enable him to reach and move about upon 

 the ground ; while a string is led from the 

 chain to the shelter, by means of which the 

 owl is kept in a lively condition. The flut- 

 tering of the bird between the ground and 

 the perch attracts the attention of the crows ; 

 their circling and cawing are noticed by the 

 hawks and eagles, which come around to see 

 what the crows have found, and are shot. 



Doctor and Patient in Aneient Hispani- 

 Ola. Some of the curious features and cus- 

 toms of the people which were described by 

 the early travelers in Ilispaniola or Hayti 

 have been recalled by Mr. H. Ling Roth, in 

 a paper before the Archaeological Institute. 

 The missionary Ramon Pane says that the 

 doctors were dieted along with their patients, 

 and were obliged to purge themselves when 

 they did. Intoxicating himself by snuffing 

 a powder which may have been tobacco, the 

 doctor would say extravagant things. These 

 were regarded as communications from the 

 Cemis or fetich, and as embodying revela- 

 tions of the origin of the sickness. Having 

 put into his mouth a package of small bones 

 and flesh and gone through some preliminary 

 observances, the doctor would go toward the 

 sick man and turn him twice about; then, 

 standing before him, take him by the legs, 

 feel his thighs, descending by degrees to his 

 feet, and draw hard, as if he would pull 

 something off; then, going to the door, he 

 would shut it, saying, " Begone to the mount- 

 ain, or to the sea, or whither thou wilt !" With 

 this he would give a blast as if he were 

 blowing something away, turn about, clap his 

 hands together, and shut his mouth, while 

 his hands would be quaking as if he were 

 a-cold. Then he would blow on his hands, 

 and drawing in his blast as if sucking the 

 marrow of a bone, he would suck at various 

 parts of the man's body. This done, after a 

 coughing and making of faces, as if they had 

 eaten some bitter thing, the doctor would 

 pull out what he had put into his mouth be- 

 fore starting out. If it was anything eatable, 

 he would tell his patient that the Ccmis had 

 put it into him to cause the distemper be- 

 cause he had not made a suitable offering to 

 it. If the patient died, and his friends were 

 strong enough to oppose the physician, they 



would mix with the juice of a certain herb 

 and the dead man's nails and forehead hair 

 pounded between two stones, and, pouring 

 it down the dead man's throat and nostrils, 

 ask him whether the physician was the cause 

 of his death. This they would do till the 

 dead man would speak, " as plain as if he 

 were alive," and answer all that they asked 

 of him, when they would return him to his 

 grave. Another method of making the 

 dead speak was to place the body over a 

 very hot fire covered with earth, when the 

 dead would answer ten questions and no 

 more. If the physician had failed to do his 

 duty, he was waylaid and bruised, but a par- 

 ticular mutilation was necessary to secure 

 his death. At night, after the bruising, 

 snakes were believed to lick the doctor's 

 body, and he would tell the people that the 

 Cemis had ccme to his assistance. 



Conntry Life, Past and Present. As to 



whether country life is more comfortable 

 now than it was fifty years ago, something 

 may be said on both sides. Most of the 

 places remote from large towns were literally 

 out of the world in the old times, so far as 

 society and active life were concerned. Trav- 

 eling by public conveyance was difficult, in- 

 convenient, and expensive ; and visits to the 

 city were rarely enough made to be with 

 many literally the event of a lifetime, while 

 hosts of other persons never enjoyed them 

 at all. Communication by letter even was 

 not common, for postage was high and grad- 

 uated according to the distance, and only 

 those who were able to indulge in it as a 

 luxury felt that they could afford to dispatch 

 many letters except on business or in cases 

 of necessity. There were market towns, and 

 they enjoyed, a kind of prosperity of their 

 own from which many of them have fallen 

 since railroads came in, and they had their 

 societies and their peculiar codes and usages 

 and games and amusements, which left no 

 lack of sources of enjoyment. But very few 

 now living in those same towns would ex- 

 change their present life there for that of 

 the past. There were, however, a sociality 

 and a heartiness in the neighborhood life of 

 those days, a freedom and equality of inter- 

 course among the people of all classes an 

 ignoring, in fact, of class distinctions a 

 community of feeling and reciprocal interest 



