SALAMANDERS. 361 



allegation of salamandrine milk-theft with the attribute of 

 mortally poisoning whatever living thing it might chance to 

 crawl over, the impossibility of reconciling the one with the 

 other is apparent. 



The Romans considered the salamander to be equally 

 fatal with aconite or hemlock. Two Roman proverbs attest 

 the strength of the belief in the potency of salamandrine 

 venom. * He who is bitten by a salamander has need of as 

 many antidotes as the creature has spots/ was one. * If a 

 salamander bites you, put on your shroud,' was another. 



So deep-rooted had become this poisonous belief, that in 

 later days we find Maupertuis considering it worth while to 

 adduce some opposing testimony. He relates that a certain 

 man, to whom his wife had administered portions of a sala- 

 mander in hopes of becoming a widow, actually swallowed 

 the flesh, yet continued to live. Maupertuis then records 

 some experiments he had performed, and with the result of 

 proving that salamanders were not so deadly as had been 

 imagined. In one experiment he applied the teeth of a sala- 

 mander to the thigh of a fowl, from which he had plucked 

 the feathers, to the lips and tongue of a dog, and to the 

 tongue of the fowl ; in each case without any injurious result. 



Galen thought it worth while to record that he knew the 

 salamander could burn ; a sufficient proof of the prevalence 

 in his time of belief to the contrary. Equally fixed was the 

 belief that any combustible matter became incombustible, if 

 invested in the skin of a salamander. Accordingly, Marco 

 Polo adverts to the belief, in speaking of a certain cloth sent 

 by a certain Tartar king to the Pope. The garment was said 

 to have been woven of salamander wool. A novel idea that 

 a lizard should have been invested with wool evidently the 

 salamandrine attribute must have undergone some extension. 

 This acute old traveller, however, divined the real truth, in- 

 asmuch as he quite correctly observes the so-called wool in 

 question was none else than the mineral substance asbestos. 



