Union County courier. [volume] (Elk Point, Union County, D.T. [S.D.]) 187?-1913, 1885-11-18
RaRORS NOT 3
Come Curious Belse4. aud superstitions
sGt th~ AnsiunAs

vVt00 lUxlOUs btelAtAs anu S0RerStltlOna o.
tho Ancients.
Sir T. Browne wrote about "vulga,
errors" 20 he called them; but the err
rors respecting the an NAL and vegeta,
Bile worlds, which were current all
through the middle ages, were just the
reverse-ihey we're scholarly. They
came Of the habit. against which Lord
Bacon was never tired of crying out
OF accepting things on authority. Il
Aristotle or Pliny had said il, it mus,
DO true; and SO monk after monk
copied it out and put it in his treatise
though to test it would have been tc
refute it, and the means of testing we're
close at hand. This method Of taking
shings on trust was the bane of the old
philosophy.
Get Hollands translation of the wor.
thy Pliny if you want an afternoons
amusement. He will tell you that il
you cut oil the tip Of a dogs tail within
forty days from its birth, it will never
go mad, and that the best Of the litter
is the whelp which gets its eye light
last, OF that which the mother carries
first into her kennel. OF the dogs
faithfulness he has notable instances.
1t has been known to throw itself into
the flames when its masters funeral
prye was kirdled. It will breed with
the tiger. The Indians cross their
dogs in this way. The first and Sec
ond crosses are too savage; the third
q be trained. No matter how fierce
a dog is, it will neve attack you If you
sit down--Homer says the same thing
in the Odyssey and it may be silenced
by holding to it a brand snatched from
a funeral-psre. When cremation was
given up, this recipe had to DO modi-
fed; and for the brand was substituted
"the hand OF glory" which credulous
medieval burglars used to carry, with
the view OF keeping the Watchdog
quiet. The most fighting breed was
the Molossian, o splendid sample OF
which theyking OF Albania gave to Alex
ander the Great, when he was going to
India. Alexander had boars, stays,
and bears slipped to it, but the dog lay
motionless; whereat the kings anger
was aroused that such o noble form
should cover SO sluggish a spirit, and
he babe the dog be killed, sending a
message to the giver that the dog was
unworthy of them both. Whereupon
another like dog was sent, with the
warning that the first dogs inaction
was not due to sluggishness, bat to
contempt. such dogs being used to be
matched against elephants and lions.
AL exander at once tried him with n
lion, which he slew, and then set him
at an elephant, round which he circled,
bayjng loudly. and with all his bristles
erect, slipping in and avoiding the ele-
plants stroke whenever he got the
chance. At last the elephant grew
dizzy, and falling down, was made o
prey by its small-sized antagonist. I'm
like bees, and rats, and cows, and sew
eral other misunderstanding pleas.
ants. which Norfolk poachers catch
with peas stepped in brandy-dogs can
never be got to drink anything strong
or than water, at least so Pliny SAYS.
Hence the Roman nickname, "pran-
dunn caninum" "a dogs lunch) for o
teetotal banquet.
Strangely enough, about elephants,
Pliny is a good deal nearer the truth
than he is abont dogs. Borrowing from
Aristotle, he explains just as accurately
how they are caught and tanned as If
he was q globe.trotter, returned from
Ceylon. He is right, too, in telling
how certain natives wait up a tree till
the last of the herd is passing under.
On this they drop. and seizing its tail
in their left hand, use the other hand
in hamstringing it. He records the
story OF the Roman solkier who cut off
the trunk of one of Pyrrhus' elephants,
and so saved the legion from going
down the third time before the Mace
DOMAIN phalanx; and he tells, too, how
Hannibal offered a Roman prisoner his
life ii he could beat an elephant in q
single fight, though l hope he is wrong
in adding that the Punic General sent
horsemen to waylay tho man when. af-
ter coming off victorious, he had been
set at liberty. He is certainly wrong
in saying that African elephants, as
sembling in groups OF tours and tives,
and ~interlacing legs and trunks, COM
init themselves to the waves and float
over the finer pastures of Arabia;
though not more wrong than Aristotle,
who says that the elephant cannot
swim, but walks across deep rivers
breathing through its uplifted trunk.
A scholarly error about elephants was
that Of the vicar of Ottery st. Mary,
father of Coleridge, the poet, who took
the mammoth's bones, SO often found
in the south of England. to belong to
elephants brought over by the Romans,
quoting "Poly9nus Stratagems' to the
effect that Caesar used one when fore
ing the passage of the Thames. "He
does not mention it in his Common
~taries,' thinking it would detract from
the honor of his victories" 1t is re-
markable, by the way, that an ele-
plants trunk and head are sculptured
on Of the capitals in Ottery st. !
Mary's church. One is glad to learn
from Cicero that when Pompey had
twenty elephants hunted to death in
the circus to delight the people, the
reused was not delight, but
pity; "the spectators though that there
was q kinship to man in the sagacious
creatures.
Pliny, who says that wild rose
reduced to a liniment with
grease, doth wonderfully make
hare to grow again." tells many
strange things about wolves. He be.
lieves in the versipellis. turnskin, or
and he holds that o VOLTS
snout Is . counter charm against all
sorcery, and hat new-wedded wives
should anoint the side-posts of their
houses with VOLTS fat, so hat no charm
raay have power to enter. ELAN adds
to the queer animal stories set down by
A wolf, he says, can not bend
its back; and if it treads on the squill-
it at once becomes torpid there
fore foxes take care to strew squills in
the dens Of wolveg-AH the Year
Round.
Hotel Tables.
From an article on HOTEL Keeping,
by George Hes, in the Century, We
onoAo thu f~ollow;po. t.Whor T have |