ANIMAL AND PLANT LORE. 381 



by other weapons than the teeth. It is true that the bite of certain 

 animals a squirrel, for example often suppurates and heals very 

 slowly, but this is to be ascribed to the depth and laceration of the 

 punctures inflicted by its powerful teeth, which are usually made 

 to meet in the finger of the person bitten. Of course, in what 

 precedes, it has been assumed that the animal which inflicted the 

 bite was not rabid. There is a rather wide-spread belief among 

 uneducated people that, if any one is bitten by a dog, the latter 

 should at once be killed, lest at some future time he go mad, when 

 the person bitten would also become rabid. This baseless fear 

 seems also to be common in Ireland, according, to Lady Wilde. 



Equally irrational with the general ascription of hurtful powers 

 to mammalian saliva is the popular belief in its healing powers. 

 Not only is it usual to hear people say that the dog, for instance, 

 in licking his wounded paw, is making a most efficient vulnerary 

 application, but the dog is encouraged to lick the hand of his master 

 to cure a cut finger or other slight injury. No doubt the cleans- 

 ing effect of constant licking would be most salutary and would 

 promote healing by the first intention, but in the popular mind a 

 specific healing virtue is attached to dogs' and to cats' saliva a 

 virtue which is, however, purely imaginary. 



Would it be premature to suggest, as a provisional explanation 

 of many saliva cures, especially those of a surgical character, that 

 they are survivals of primeval surgery ; and that this, in turn, had 

 its origin in our inheritance from the lower animals, which so often 

 apply saliva to wounds and ulcers by lapping them with the 

 tongue ? 



But to trace in detail the genealogy of saliva cures and saliva 

 charms is a task as yet impossible. It would surely not be easy 

 even to show how the Mandingo negroes, the South Sea islanders, 

 the American Indians, and the Japanese have come to share with 

 the Aryan and Semitic races in beliefs concerning the magical 

 efficacy of saliva.* For the solution of such problems as this the 

 young science of folk lore must wait, on the one hand, for a general 

 advance in the field of anthropology, and, on the other, for the accu- 

 mulation and collation of data exceeding a hundred-fold those 

 accessible to the folk-lore student of to-day. 



Data, collected in Switzerland by Mile. N. Iwanoff go to show that mortality 

 from organic disease of the heart decreases as the altitude of the habitation rises. 

 As a secondary result of the inquiry, it was found that this mortality is higher in 

 towns than in the country. 



* Some details in regard to the geographical and ethnical distribution of certain saliva 

 charms were given in a paper of mine, Some Saliva Charms, read before the American Folk- 

 lore Society, at its Philadelphia meeting, November, 1889. 



