Occasional Notes. 149 
trative of animism are constantly presenting themselves. 
Here are two. When the wind has blown strongly during 
the night and has shaken the hnmmocks, the boy and girl 
Indian servants not unfrequently complain that ' people ' 
came to their hammocks during the night and shook 
them. The second instance is perhaps still more quaint. 
A 'mocking bird' (Cassicus persicus) having been 
caught and tamed was brought to a house near by which 
is a colony of wild birds of the same sort. Some of the 
wild birds visited the tame one. Upon which an Indian 
maiden remarked that if the tame one was not watched 
the wild one would come and poison it ! 
Couvade. — The Professor to whose semi-belief in the 
possible reasonableness of couvade {Timehri p. 160 
Vol. 2) as the consequence of a possible real physico- 
sympathetic connection between a man and his wife, has 
called my attention to the very similar view held by a 
recent correspondent of the " Academy," to which paper 
a member of the Folk-Lore Society writes : — 
" In Mr. York Powell's interesting and able review of Grimm's Teutonic 
Mythology (Academy, February 23) reference is made to the universal 
belief among our English and Irish peasantry ' that a man will suffer 
from such ills as are wont to accompany pregnancy, nausea, neuralgia, 
and the like, if his wife be lucky enough to escape them.' Just to show 
that folk-lore is in many cases but a too free and illogical argument 
based on facts, I may perhaps be allowed to say that I am to-day ac- 
quainted with three persons, one living in Sussex, one in London and 
one in Northants, who invariably suffer from neuralgia or vomiting 
when their wives are enceinte, the ladies themselves having a very happy 
time of it." 
While on this subject I may as well insert the following 
note on the derivation of the word couvade from a recent 
