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PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
does not rest satisfied with tearing to pieces the snake that he has 
met on his path and swallowing it tail foremost, according to an 
invariable custom. He provokes it from the bottom of its darkest 
caverns ; he laughs at the nuaiber of his enemies, and permits 
them to coil around him, for his mother has confided to him the 
secret of an infallible specific against the venom of their bites. 
This secret consists very simply in going down to the first stream 
where there are crawfish, and gargling his mouth with half a hund- 
red of these Crustacea, but without drinking. This last condition 
is rigorous, without drinking ; if the stag drinks, he is lost. I do 
not guarantee the infallibility of the above specific. 
It is known that in ancient medicine the powder of the hart’s 
horn and that of the hone of his heart passed for alexipharmics, 
tonics of high virtues. 
The hart’s horn is the universal panacea that cures all ills pres- 
ent, past, and future — relieves the pregnant woman — destroys 
worms in the child, and makes the old man young again. The 
Doe also possesses wonderful remedies for a number of diseases ; 
she penetrates far into the secrets of Lucina, and knows pebbles 
that produce painless delivery. Arab medicine, which would nev- 
er allow the Greek or Latin to distance it on the ground of won- 
derful secrets, affirms that the skin and the dung of the Gazelle, 
reduced to powder and mingled in very small quantities in the 
nourishment of a child, give him memory, spirit, and a mild char- 
acter. It adds that the best means of curing women of the pro- 
pensity to babble is to make them eat from time to time the tongue 
of a gazelle dried in the oven. 
The Catholic faith has made great use of the stag to illustrate 
its legends. Saint Hubert, the patron of hunters, owed his con- 
version to a stag. 
Saint Hubert was a gentleman of Lorraine who abandoned 
himself to his passion for the chase with a vehemence which 
caused him completely to forget the salvation of his soul. The 
good God who had designs upon him, and who destined him to be 
one day the venerated standard-bearer of the corporation of hunt- 
ers, caused him to meet one fine morning or afternoon with a stag 
bearing the holy sacrament on his head in guise of antlers. 
