1900] > CURRENT LITERATURE 213 
THERE APPEARED, in 1896, as the Fourth Memoir of the American 
Folk-Lore Society,a volume by Mrs, Fanny D. Bergen entitled Current 
Superstitions, dealing “almost entirely with beliefs not of a zoological or 
botanical nature.” Mrs. Bergen has recently contributed to the Memoirs of 
the same society another volume comprising, as its name Animal and Plant 
Lore® indicates, only the folk-lore of animals and plants. This book will 
be especially interesting to those who have followed in the GAZETTE the 
same author’s lists of the popular names of plants. 
The table of contents of the second part, on plant lore, is at the outset 
instructive and interesting. There is a chapter on amulets, charms and divi- 
nations, another on omens, a third on weather signs, a fourth on folk-medi- 
cine, and finally one devoted to miscellaneous items which is no whit 
behind the others in curious and, to the scientific mind, astounding data. 
This folk-lore is furnished from a great many states, east, west, north, and 
south, and, as Professor Bergen suggests in his very interesting introduction, 
“if we cannot detect in it morsels from every country in Europe, from half 
the tribes of Africa, from a large part of Asia and the great Pacific islands, 
as well as from many tribes of American Indians, it is only because our 
analysis is not sufficiently minute.” 
_ As to amulets we find that nutmegs are regarded as a true panacea, 
being used to prevent boils, croup, neuralgia, cold sores (this latter in the 
neighborhood of Boston !) earache and sties. Mountair ash is used as a 
charm both of a good and bad nature, while dandelions and southernwood 
are prominent in processes of divination. The chapter on folk-medicine 
adduces many folk-remedies, which although probably the result of pure 
empiricism are not without foundation in fact; ¢. g., the wide use of various 
parts of the elder, Sambucus sp. Extensive notes supplement the data given 
in the body of the book. = 
The value of the work done by Mrs. Bergen in collecting this material now 
can hardly be overrated. It is to be hoped that it may be continued until the 
annals of our American superstitions are fully recorded.—RoDNEY H. TRUE. 
_ THE TWo LATEST REPORTS of the state botanist of New York, Mr. 
Charles H. Peck,? are for the years 1897 and 1898. They are in the main 
* BERGEN : Animal and plant lore, collected from the oral tradition of English 
Speaking folk; edited and annotated by Fanny D. Bergen with an introduction by 
Joseph G. B Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society, volume 7. ovo- 
rgen. m 
PP-x+ 180. Published for the American Folk-Lore Society by Houghton, Mifflin & 
Co., Boston and New York. 1899. 
___*Peck, CHARLES H.: Report of the State Botanist for 1897. Reprinted from 
Fifty first Ann. Rep. of the N. Y. State Museum: 267-321, col. pl. A-B, So ee 
Albany, 1898. 10 cents. 
Peck, CHaRLEs H.: Report of the State Botanist for 1898. Bull. N. ¥. State 
Museum no. 25, 5:619-688, col. pl. 57-61 in gto. Albany, Oct. 1899. 40 cents. 
