VOL. XIX. (3) 
THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS 
21 1 
Goring, Esq.), Sussex (near Steyning), after violent gales, 
brine is sometimes deposited quite thickly upon the old win- 
dows. In the early eighties (April, 1882), after a famous south- 
western storm, the deer got at the lower window-panes of the 
house, and while licking them, smashed many of them in with 
their horns. In consequence of this, a preventive wall had 
to be built. A curious story was told to my brother, Mr John 
Baddeley, by a game-keeper in Russia of the Lynx, which is 
not a rare animal there, even near the great cities. The 
wild deer are so irresistibly attracted by salt that they some- 
times discover in the snow the spot where the lynx has 
discharged water. No sooner are they engaged with this, to 
them, satisfactory lind, than the wily and fierce animal drops 
from an over-hanging tree upon his victim and finishes him off. 
A mixture of salt, mortar, and carra way-seed is found to be 
very attractive to most wild birds. This fact was known in 
former days, for there is an Act forbidding the putting down 
of rock-salt in order to attract a neighbour’s birds, particularly 
his pigeons. 
A curious use of salt comes from Borneo, namely, as a 
judgment. Each Dyak litigant is given a lump of salt, and at 
a given signal both drop their lumps into water. He whose 
lump dissolves quickest is adjudged the loser. 
Livy and the Kaiser call the Greeks ‘ Sal Gentium : ’ or 
‘ Salt of the Earth.’ Mr Lloyd George formerly called the 
South-Wales miners by the same flattering phrase. Christ, 
of course, used the same term : ‘ Vos estis sal terrce.' St. Jerome, 
four centuries later, flatteringly applied this phrase to the 
Bishops of the Church. 
This makes one consider how it is that a grain of salt 
should be used proverbially as applied to a somewhat exag- 
gerated, though not necessarily witty, story. In this case, 
I think, the grain of salt may have reference to the ritual use 
of salt as a propitiation to the Gods, for having stretched the 
Truth. The phrase ‘Attic salt ’ referred merely to flavour, 
or wittiness. The Attic variety was held to be less bitter 
than other salt. In Latin, I remind myself, ‘ dicere aliquid 
salse ’ is to speak shrewdly, or wittily, and not too long ! 
And, with your leave, I will close here this mere sketch of a 
rather too-much-neglected subject. 
