Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/394

380 that had the "slobbers" as the farmers there say. But I am told that on the north coast of Prince Edward's Island the name "horsespit" is one in common use for the substance; frog-spit and cuckoospit are other synonyms in the same locality. This last fanciful name is also to be met with in England and Ireland. A native of County Kerry, Ireland, has told me in considerable detail the popular theory, in that region, of its origin. The cuckoo-spit, she said, is found only on the leaves of sorrel (Rumex acetosella). Any one who looks inside the little bunches of spit will find a very small green bug, and this bug is the last thing the cuckoo ate before she went away for the winter. So, when she comes back, she must spit this out before she can sing at all. And therefore, when people see this spit on the sorrel leaves in the morning, they say, "Now the cuckoo's come back again," or "The cuckoo's been here in the night."

Very generally throughout the United States the spittle of an angry dog, if introduced into the circulation, is thought to be a deadly poison, and the bite of a dog that is enraged is feared almost like that of one having hydrophobia. The same belief is held to a less extent regarding the saliva of an angry man. In Swabia, says Dr. Buck, not only are both of these kinds of spittle deemed to be highly poisonous, but the most dangerous of all is reckoned to be that of a person who has been tickled to death! Some interesting superstitions brought here by Irish immigrants, concerning the dangerous character of the spit of the weasel, have been recounted elsewhere. With us the saliva of an angry horse is also dreaded. The saliva of the rat, both in the United States and in England, is pretty generally endowed by the popular imagination with venomous properties, whether the rat which inflicts the bite is especially irritated at the moment of biting or not. In the rat's case the poisonous character attributed to the bites of the long, chisel shaped incisors is sometimes ascribed to a specific poison existent in the saliva, and sometimes to the teeth being covered, as it is thought, with the remains of the garbage on which the animal feeds. Frank Buckland, one of the best of authorities on such matters, asserts positively that the bite of the rat is not poisonous, and that bad effects follow from rat-bites only when the patient's system is in such a condition that any trivial wound might cause serious consequences. Several skilled physicians, to whom I have addressed inquiries in regard to the nature of wounds inflicted by the teeth, either of man or of such domesticated mammals as are likely to attack man, have all stated that, contrary to the popular belief, these bites are no more dangerous than like injuries inflicted