Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/386

372 hoped-for victim. In another part of the same State the required call was—

 Jack, Jack, come up the world! Bread and butter, bread and butter," etc.

I've rarely seen on canvas so interesting a genre picture as a tableau vivant one may often see, in Western farming districts, a child standing in the burning summer sun, holding securely with one hand a grasshopper, while he earnestly repeats

 Spit, spit tobacco-juice! Spit, spit tobacco-juice!"—

and the established rule of the children is to detain the queer, awkward little captive until as a ransom he "spits," when he is to go free. In New England these lines to the grasshopper are

 Grasshopper, grasshopper gray, Give me some molasses, Or I'll cut off your head And throw you away!"

I suppose every one knows the familiar call to the lady-bug whenever one is seen by a child

 Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, Your house is on fire and your children will burn!"

I have wondered if this is merely a putting into words the idea of flame which is suddenly suggested by the sight of one of these beautifully colored beetles. What child can resist pulling a seed-dandelion and blowing the feathered head, "to see if my mother wants me to go home"? And plenty of children believe that holding a buttercup under the chin really indicates whether one likes butter or not. Many a little country girl thinks that the color of her next new dress is foretold by the color of the first butterfly she sees in the spring. In some places in Western States there is a superstition that, if you make a wish the first time you see a new-born calf, your wish "will come true."

One of the queerest myths regarding animals I learned from a native of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The boys there, fifty or sixty years ago, were quite certain that, if a live coal were put on a turtle's back, the animal would come out of his shell and crawl away, leaving the latter behind him!

In some parts of Eastern Massachusetts if the children see a "daddylong-legs," they exclaim, "Don't kill him, or it'll rain to-morrow!" In the same localities there is great faith in the good fortune brought by the capture of what they call "lucky-bugs" the common whirligigs (Gyrinidæ), insects of an oval shape and blue-black color, which may be seen in swarms whirling ceaselessly about with a sort of waving motion on our ponds and streams. The notion is that if you can catch