Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/382

368 which long ago passed from your list of edibles? Sassafras-bark, both of twig and root, spice-wood, "slippery-elm," the buds of the linden-tree, the tender shoots from the spruce and larch, all tickle the palate of the boy or girl. Men whose boyhood was passed anywhere in Northern New England may recall how fond they once were of something which was called "sliver," the cambium layer of the white pine. In certain places it is the fashion to chew the leaves of the Antennaria, "Indian tobacco"—in others, thistle-blossoms. Will ever honey taste as sweet as did the dainty droplets taken direct from some unfortunate bumble-bee captured and dismembered by the boy seeking what he may devour? The tubers of the squirrel-corn and rootstocks of the pepper-root are sought after with a diligence deserving of a treasure. The birds are not the only harvesters of the pretty moss known as robin-wheat.

The numerous observations, then, of children, regarding the appearances and properties of plants and animals, give them a widespread series of premises, chiefly of a practical character, from which to draw inferences. Children are proverbial for asking questions, whose depth is often astonishing. Their eagerness to have their inquiries answered often leads them to take their own hasty, illogical inferences for correct answers, though they may really be quite absurd. Their natural credulity makes it easy for children to accept as a fact any notion once formulated; hence many of their superstitions may have arisen. Some of these are shared by ignorant people of mature years, who, intellectually speaking, are but children. Beliefs of this mythical nature vary somewhat with locality, but certain of them have become crystallized, as it were, and grown to be common property, and are as generally accepted by country boys and girls as any theological dogma among their elders.

The snake-tribe has given rise to an unusually large number of superstitions. Among peoples of every degree of civilization and of all times, from the dawn of history to the present day, some form of serpent-worship has prevailed. This is not improbably due to the air of mystery which attaches to the stealthy movements of the animal, and to the awe-inspiring effect of the bite of poisonous snakes. And, just as serpent-worship prevails most among savages to-day, so among civilized peoples, children, most of all, feel a fearful, superstitious interest in all that concerns snakes, and have invented many myths about them. In Central Ohio, when one child kills a snake, the lookers on universally call out,"Its tail won't die till sundown." This notion, I find, is one of wide acceptation, and doubtless arises from the persistent vitality of the muscular contractility of the snake. In Southern Ohio it is now generally believed that a snake will not crawl over ash-wood; and a man over eighty years of age tells me the same belief was common in Massachusetts when he was a boy, and he thinks it is by no means yet extinct. In certain localities in Massachusetts