82

ANIMAL SIMPLES.

to six montha afterwards. Dr. Jonathan Hutchinsonteils of cats having become infected frora mice withskin disease (favus), and subsequently communicatingthe same to children who nursed or fondled the cats.Petci' Levetis (Student of Physich, 1667), ordered, " Forto take away hair, gel hard cats düng, dry it, andbeat it to powder, and temper it with strong vinegar ;then wash the place with the same where you wouldhave no hair to grow. Also take the blood of a snailwithout a shell, and it hinderet b greatly the growingup of hair." Shylock, the Jew, in Shakespeare'sMerchant of Venice, thus delivers himself:—"Some menthere are love not a gaping (roasted) pigj some thalare mad if they behold a cat; and others, when thebag-pipe sings i' the nose cannot contain their urine."

Concerning "shingles," for the eure of which, as hasbeen said, the blood from a Black cat's tail was orderedin the sixteenth century, a curious practice still prevailsin Wales whei'e the term for shingles means "theEagle." We are told in the My&tery of Pharmacp(1897), that it was supposed in ancient times if aperson should eat of eagles' flesh he would never sufferfrom shingles, and bis direct deseendants down to thenintb generation could not contract it. Cheese wasformerly sohl in Cheshire moulded into the form of aCat: hence may have come the allusion to "grin like aCheshire cat." Shakespeare, in Macbeth, refers to the" Cat i' the adage," that is, " Gatus amat pisces, sed mmmit tingereplantas" : "letting 1 dare not, waituponI would."—

.V tortoisc sliell tom cat is thought to be of rare value.Tom Hood (18;»0), in the Comic Annwü, called one a" Torture-shell Tomb cat, and a grate faverit that dyd."Cats are supposed to have been brought into England