COUNTRY PLACES. 185 
Brother was so cross 
Sat him on a horse, 
Horse was so randy 
Gave him some brandy, 
Brandy was so strong 
Put him in the pond, 
Pond was so deep 
Put him in the cradle and 
rocked him off to sleep. 
It is curious that there seems to be a distinct race of 
flat heads. among the cottagers; the children look as if 
the front part of the head had been sat upon and com- 
pressed. Straw hats, the common sort, seem to be made 
to fit these shallow crowns. In some parts they cook 
dates ; others cook oranges, making them into dumplings | 
and also stewing them. These are favourite sweets. To 
go out singing from door to door at Christmas is called 
wassailing—a relic of the ancient time when wassail was 
acommon word. When I was a boy, among other out- 
of-the-way pursuits, I took an interest in astrology. The 
principal work on astrology, from which all the others 
have been more or less derived, is Ptolemy’s ‘ Tetra- 
biblos, and there, pointing out the mysterious influence of 
one thing upon another, it mentions that the virtues of 
the magnet may be destroyed by rubbing it with garlic. 
This curious statement has been thrown against Ptolemy 
and held to invalidate his theories, because upon experi- 
ment garlic is not found to affect the magnet. Possibly, 
however, the plant Ptolemy meant may not have been 
the plant we now call garlic, for there is nothing so un- 
certain as the names of plants. There is a great confu- 
sion, and it is difficult to identify with certainty appa- 
rently well-known herbs with those used by the ancients. 
Possibly, too, the experiment was performed in a dif- 
ferent manner. It happened one day, many years after 
