GOAT. | NATURAL HISTORY. 129 
none but the fairest. Gnats seem to be more worthy esteem 
than the ordinary sort of almanac-makers; for they will tell 
you the weather at all times, and for nothing, and that 
more certainly and truly. For if the Gnats near sunset 
do play up and down in open air, they presage heat ; if 
in the shade, warm and mild showers ; but if they alto- 
gether sting those that pass by them, then expect cold 
weather and very much rain. When a Gnat comes forth of 
the oak-apple about Michaelmas, it foretells war and 
hostility; if a spider, dearth; if a worm, fertility and fruitful- 
ness, If any one would find water either in a hill or valley, 
let him observe the sun-rising, and where the Gnats whirl 
round in form of an obelisk, underneath there is water to 
be found. Yea, dreams of Gnats do foretell news of war 
or a disease, and that so much the more dangerous as it 
shall be apprehended to approach the more principal parts 
of the body. Hang some horse-hair and make it fast in 
the middle of the doors, and Gnats will not come in at it. 
Our countrymen that live about the fens have invented a 
fen-canopy, being made of a broad, plain, half-dry, some- 
what hard piece or many pieces together of cow’s dung, and 
these they hang at their bed’s feet; with the smell and 
juice whereof the Gnats being very much taken, and feed- 
ing thereon all the night long, let them sleep quietly in 
their beds. 
Mouffet, “Theatre of Insects,” bk. i ch. xiii. 
Goat. 
i, Kine Henry IV., iit. 1, 39. 
Tue Goat breathes at the ears, and not at the nose, and 
is seld without fever. And we mean not that Goats see 
less by night than by day. And if a man draw one out 
of the flock by the beard, the others be astonied and behold. 
And also the same happeth when one of them biteth a cer- 
tain herb. And if the Goat conceive afore the northern 
wind, she yeaneth males, and if she conceive afore the 
southern wind, she yeaneth females. And if a man take a 
Goat, and rear him up suddenly, then the other rear them 
also, and behold him sadly. Serpents be chased and driven 
away. with ashes of Goats’ horns, and with their wool burnt. 
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