
278 
KIDD’S OWN JOURNAL 

therefore, though we must be prepared to pay com- 
paratively high prices, we may consider ourselves 
safe from those extreme prices, and the derange- 
ment consequent thereupon, which the extravagant 
estimates to which we have alluded, point. 
And there is at léast this consolation—as 
America will be our chief market of supply, and 
will most profit by it, we may look forward to a 
continued large demand from that quarter for our 
manufactures in exchange ; and which, by afford- 
ing good employment to our people, will at least 
mitigate the inconvenience of our own rather 
deficient harvest. 
ZOOLOGICAL FOLK LORE.—No. III. 
BY J. MINTOSH ; MEM. ENT. SOC., ETC. 
(Continued from Page 352.) 

In ADDITION To wHAT we have already 
said about popular superstition, we may add 
the following as being equally absurd. 
No. 22. Bers.—In ancient times it was 
considered by the awe-stricken idolaters, as 
a‘‘boding prodigy” if bees settled upon a 
temple , a tree devoted to the gods, or even 
(according to Pliny) upon an ordinary house. 
Juvenal thus exclaims (Satire XIII. 99):— 
Here if one just, ore holy man be found, 
A present miracie ! we shout around. 
Not more dismayed should monstrous forms appear, 
Or earth-born fish arrest the ploughing steer ; 
Or swarming bees portending ills to Rome, 
Hang clustering from a consecrated dome. 
The 10th of August is considered in some 
parts of England their jubilee, and those 
who are seen working on that day are called 
Quakers. Omens were wont to be taken 
from their swarming; and their settling on 
the mouths of Plato and Pindar was taken 
as a sure presage of their future eloquence 
and poetry. The Church of Rome, too, has 
the following passage in her Breviary :— 
“Peter Nolascus, born of a noble family at 
Recordi, near Carcasona, in France, excelled 
in eminent love towards his neighbors; the 
presage of whose virtue was, that while he, 
yet an infant, was crying in his cradle, a 
swarm of bees flew to him and constructed 
a honey-comb in his right hand!” In the 
south of England, we are gravely informed 
that if they should swarm upon a stake 
merely set in the ground, one of the family 
is sure to die! 
No. 23. SNAKES’ SKINS.—The good folks 
of Devon consider the skin of these reptiles 
very useful in extracting thorns, &c., from 
the body; but, unlike other remedies, it is 
repellant, not attractive, therefore it must 
be applied on the opposite side to that which 
the thorn entered ! 
24, Poutrry.—lIf the Cock crows with his 
face towards the door or window, it is a 
sure sign that you will be visited during the 
day by some stranger. The crowing of the 


the reverence which the 

hen bodes evil; it isa sign of death in the 
family. No house, we are sagely told by our 
country folk, can thrive whose hens are 
addicted to this kind of amusement. Hence 
the often-quoted old proverb :— 
“A whistling woman, and a crowing hen, 
Are neither fit for God nor men.” 
25. Cats.—In many parts of England, 
May cats are considered unlucky; and it 
is said that they suck the breath of children ! 
If the cat frisks about the house in an un- 
usually lively manner, windy or stormy 
weather is approaching ! 
In some parts of [reland, blood drawn 
from a black cat’s ear, and rubbed on the 
part affected, is a certain cure for St. 
Anthony’s fire! In the palmy days of ancient 
Egypt, it was death for a person to kill one 
of these animals with or without a design. 
Diodorus relates an incident to which he 
was an eye-witness during his stay in Egypt. 
A Roman having inadvertently, and withont 
design, killed a cat, the exasperated populace 
ran to his house; and neither the authority 
of the king, nor the terror of the Roman 
name, could rescue the unfortunate criminal ! 
When a cat died in a house, the owner of 
the house shaved his eye-brows. The dead 
cats were then carried into consecrated 
houses to be embalmed; after which they 
interred them at Bubostis, a considerable 
city in Lower Egypt. Even at the present 
time, we are informed that cats are treated 
with the greatest care in that benighted 
country. At Damascus, we are informed by 
Baumgarten, there is a hospital for cats ; and 
Brown, in his history of Jamaica, says a 
cat is a dainty dish among the negroes. 
In England, during Alfred’s time, (he reigned 
from 871 to about 901,) laws were made to 
preserve and fix the prices of certain animals ; 
amongst which the cat was included. But 
in no country were they worshipped as in 
Egypt. “Amongst us,” says Cicero, ‘‘it is very 
common to see temples robbed, and _ statues 
carried off, but it was never known that any 
person in Egypt ever abused a crocodile, an 
ibis, or a cat; for its inhabitants would have 
suffered the most extreme torments rather 
than be guilty of such sacrilege.” Such was 
Egyptians had 
towards their animals, that in an extreme 
famine they chose to eat one another rather 
than feed upon their imagined deities. 
To read of animals, and vile reptiles— 
honored with religious worship, placed in 
temples, maintained with great care and at 
an extravagant expense (Diodorus states 
that in his time the expense amounted to no 
less than one hundred thousand crowns, 
or £22,500), and that those who murdered 
them were put to death—are absurdities 
which we, at this distance of time, can scarcely 
believe ; and yet we have the evidence of all 

