184 THE FIRE-DAMP'S FAMILY CIRCLE. 



of damps. I never heard that it was mortal ; hut by reason 

 of it many good groves lie idle at the best and most profitable 

 part of the year, when the subterraneous waters are at the 

 lowest.' 



The next damp mentioned by our authority is a veritable 

 curiosity in its way : ' It is the strangest and most pestilential 

 of any, if all be true which is said concerning it. Those who 

 pretend to have seen it (for it is visible) describe it thus. In 

 the highest parts of those passages which branch out from the 

 main grove, they often see a round thing hanging about the 

 bigness of a football, covered with a skin of the thickness of 

 a cobweb. This, they say, if by any accident, as the splinter 

 of a stone or the like, it be broken, immediately disperseth 

 itself and suffocates all the company. Therefore, to prevent 

 casualties, as soon as they have espied it (they say), they have 

 a way, by the help of a stick and a long rope, of breaking it 

 at a distance; which done, they purify the place well by fire 

 before they dare enter it again.' 



One must needs demur to the channel through which evi- 

 dence in this case was obtained. It reminds one of the first 

 circumstantial accounts of the aspect of the upas tree, pub- 

 lished by the Dutch surgeon Foersch, though that same verit- 

 able historian had previously informed his readers how no 

 living thing could approach the fearful tree nearer than twelve 

 miles, and still live. I strongly suspect the cobweb-covered 

 thing ' about the bigness of a football* to have been a veritable 

 nidus equce, and that the whole tale was a canard. The nar- 

 rator seems himself to have had some faint notion of the kind, 

 for he tells us : ' I dare not avouch the truth of this story in 

 all its circumstances, because the proof of it seems impossible, 

 since they say it kills all that are likely to bear witness to all 

 the particulars. Neither dare I deny but such a thing may 

 have been seen hanging on the roof, since I have heard many 

 affirm it. Perhaps the general tradition they have amongst 

 them hath made them ascribe all strange and surprising 



