OCCASIONAL NOTES. 163 
It is not good to use perfume when going to a wake or 
visiting the dead, and when you are leaving the party 
never say ‘‘ good night.” 
Deprecating harm.—lf you have to cross a pool of 
water in the street, spit into it first, otherwise you will 
get a glandular swelling or abscess. 
When you have occasion to pick sour-sop leaves to 
keep away mosquitoes, always do so before sunset, but if 
you really want them at night, humbly ask the tree to 
allow you to have them, otherwise the tree spirit will 
trouble you all night. 
Plantains.—lf you have only plantains without any 
fish or meat, do not eat them alone or you will get 
dropsy. 
Finger-nails.—Cut your nails the first Friday in the 
month, wrap the cuttings in paper, hide them ina corner, 
and you will be lucky for the whole month. 
Hair.—Have your hair cut at the full moon and it 
will grow thick; do not thank the hair-cutter nor the 
person who combs and dresses your hair, otherwise it will 
begin to fall off and refuse to grow. 
Poisons and their Antidotes.—In baking cassavabread, 
and boiling cassareep, the operator often gets cramp in 
the stomach from inhaling the poison, and a case was 
reported to us of a woman and her babe at the breast 
dying from these symptoms. It is a popular idea that if 
some of the clay in which the root has been grown is 
mixed with water and drunk the poison will be rendered 
inocuous. (There may be some sub-stratum of truth in 
this; the poison is prussic acid—most clays contain 
oxide of iron in a finely divided state—and the same 
result may be produced as by a dose of freshly-precipi- 
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