SCIENTIFIC IGNOHANCE.

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of witchcraft or charms, or eise it is a subjeet requiringfervent prayer, ratlier than a patient study of the anatomyand physiology of our own bodies. Diseases come, theDeutschers believe, not from any disregard of sanitary lawson the part of ourselves or forefathers, but from somedemon power who delights in tormenting poor human nature;and eures are wrought, not by a knowledge of the exquisiteorganic machinery composing the human frame, but byburning penny candles to some illumination-loving virgin orsaint.*

* While we are on the subjeet of the scientific ignorance of the Germanpeople, we may add, that a Deutsch schoolmaster assured us that the followingwas an infallible eure for the toothache :—Remove a portion ofthe outer barkfrom an alder-tree ; cut a small piece of the green wood immediately beneath it,and having shaped the splint to a point, pierce the gum with this, so that the endmay be covered with blood ; tben replace the blood-stained splint at the part ofthe tree from which the wood was removed, and cover it over again with the bark,when the patient will find in a short time that all the pain will have left him !This is about equal in intelligence to the mediseval practice of binding up thewound, and applying the salves to the weapon that inflicted it.

The same worthy related to us a marvellous oecurrence in connexion with thedeath of one of his own relations, and which we cite here merely for the purposeof exposing the fallacy of it. His brother was a priest in the Hundsrück, andwhilst our Informant was staying with him at the village parsonage, one brightsummer's night the picture of their uncle, who had settled in Australia, suddenlyfeil from the wall flat upon its face, without either the nail or eord by which itwas hung having given way. This Struck them both as so ominous an event, thata note was made of the exaet moment and hour at which it oecurred ; and in somesix months afterwards a letter was reeeived from Australia, stating that on thatvery day and honr their uncle had suddenly died from an apoplectic stroke.

The tale was told us with such perfect faith in the connexion between the twoevents, on aecount of their simultaneous oecurrence, that it was evident our friendthe schoolmaster was a mueh better Catholic than geographer, it being well knownto every schoolboy with us, that any two places having different meridians must,therefore, have different times; so that, as Australia lies between 113° and 153°east of Greenwich, it is manifest (since every 15° of longitude are equal to anhour of time) that the death ofthe uncle, in order to have oecurred simultaneouslywith the fall of the picture, must have happened from 7| to 10J hours later bythe clocks in Australia than the ominous indication oecurred, aecording to theclocks in the Hundsrück.