ANIMAL AND PLANT LORE. 375 



The evident relationship between the last two old Roman 

 cures and the Gaelic one above cited suggests an interesting 

 problem, for the student of comparative folk lore. Both the 

 Roman and the Cape Breton charm cures may be descendants of 

 some older Aryan superstition, or the Cape Breton one may have 

 been brought to Great Britain by the Roman invaders. But 

 what theory of distribution will account for a custom similar to 

 those just cited, which is very general among the Japanese, a 

 people separated from western Europeans by the whole width 

 of an immense continent, and differing ethnically so far from the 

 Caucasian race ? 



It naturally happens, from the Japanese national custom of 

 sitting with the feet doubled under on a mat, that one or both 

 legs will become numb. A Japanese scientist has kindly commu- 

 nicated to me the following particulars in regard to the saliva 

 cures for this numbness : 



" In the province of Suwo (southwest part of the main island 

 of Japan) a person picks up a piece of straw, wets it with saliva, 

 and then sticks the same on the middle part of his forehead. 

 The piece is left there till it naturally comes off. In Tokio, after 

 a piece of straw is placed on the forehead, as in the above pro- 

 cess, a person wets his index-finger, with which he first touches 

 the tip of his nose and then he rapidly moves his finger up 

 toward the forehead (without touching the latter or the straw). 

 This is repeated three times, accompanied by a saying, ' Shibire 

 Kyo ye agare/ which is of course also repeated the same number 

 of times. The phrase means literally, ' Numbness, go up to Kyo. J 

 Kyo is an abbreviation for Kyoto, where our emperors used to 

 live for many centuries till 1868, and which was then the recog- 

 nized center of Japan. People always spoke of going up to 

 1 Kyoto/ I do not know the origin of the phrase addressed to 

 the numbness, neither do I know its true significance; but one 

 which strikes me as very probable is, that it was meant to entice 

 numbness out of the lower members of the body, as every one 

 was right glad to obey such a command at any time. In the 

 province of Echigo (northwest part of the main island of Japan) 

 I heard that straw is not used, but a cross is drawn on the fore- 

 head with a finger wet with saliva." 



Since the cross is not one of the emblems of the old Shinto or 

 of the Buddhist religion, the signature of the cross in the last 

 charm is undoubtedly a survival from the introduction of Roman 

 Catholicism into Japan by Jesuit missionaries in the sixteenth 

 century. 



Pliny states that a boil may be cured by wetting it three 

 times with fasting spittle. We still find various kindred remedial 

 charms extant in the United States. From a village near Port- 



