A remarkable coincidence between the Anglo-Saxon pedigree of Odin, which makes Beav, or Beovolf, one of his ancestors, and the story of the first King of Latium, is noticed by Grimm. Beewolf—that is, bee-eater—is the German name for the woodpecker.

Many other birds were believed to forecast the weather, such as the barn door fowl, the stormy petrel, the heron, and the crane, all of which appear but to be modifications of the Aryan lightning birds so often referred to. In the Greek version of the myth, the raven represents the dark cloud. Originally, however, the cloud referred to was white; but Apollo, having sent his favourite bird to the fountain for water, was imposed upon by the feathered idler and glutton; he, therefore, turned his plumage black, and condemned him as a punishment to a continuous croaking for water to quench his thirst.

Amongst insects, the lady-bird appears to have been a fire-bringer, and is yet much in vogue in matters of augury. Gay says:—

This lady-fly I take from off the grass,
Whose spotted back might scarlet red surpass.
Fly lady-bird, north, south, or east or west,
Fly where the man is found that I love best.

I know not whether the dandelion can be classed among the lightning plants, but I remember well the blowing away of its ripened winged seeds with the view to ascertain the time of the day, as well as to solve much more profound mysteries.

In the "Athenian Oracle" the following curious rejoinder appears to the query:—"Why rats, toads, ravens, screech owls, are ominous; and how they came to foreknow fatal events?" The writer replies: "Had the querist said unlucky instead of ominous he might easily have met with satisfaction; a rat is so because it destroys many a Cheshire cheese, &c. A toad is unlucky because it poisons." [This is now known to be erroneous.] "As for ravens and screech owls, they are just as unlucky as cats, when about their courtship, because they make an ugly noise, which disturbes their neighbourhood. The instinct of rats leaving an old ship is because they cannot be dry in it, and an old house because, perhaps, they want victuals. A raven is much such a prophet as our conjurors or almanac makers, foretelling events after they are come to pass: they follow great armies, as vultures, not as foreboding battle, but for the dead men, dogs, horses, &c., which, especially in a march, must be daily left behind them. But the foolish observations made on their croaking before death, etc., are for the most part pure humour, and have no grounds besides foolish tradition or a sickly imagination." Old Reginald Scot, as early as the sixteenth century, stoutly contended "that to prognosticate that guests approach to your house on the chattering of pies or haggisters,

The Shipping Gazette, in April, 1869, contained a communication entitled "A Sailor's Notion about Rats," in which the following passage occurs:—"It is a well authenticated fact that rats have often been known to leave ships in the harbour previous to their being lost at sea. Some of those wiseacres who want to convince us against the evidence of our senses will call this superstition. As neither I have time, nor you space, to cavil with such at present, I shall leave them alone in their glory." It is difficult to decide whether the superstition, the bad logic, or the self-sufficiency of the writer of this sentence most predominates. It is a pity he did not edify the "wiseacres" as to how "the evidence of our senses" could by any possibility bring us in contact with the motive of rats, with whom we have had no intercourse either of a mental or moral kind. But perhaps the said "Shipmaster" has, after taking rats into his council, rejected their advice, and lost his bark in consequence. Truly it is a difficult matter to determine where abject superstition ends and ordinary credulity begins. The fact that rats do sometimes migrate from one ship to another, or from one barn or corn stack to another, from various causes, ought to be quite sufficient to explain such "evidence of our senses" as informs us that "rats have often been known to leave ships in harbour previous to their being lost at sea." If they left the ship at all in harbour, it, of necessity must have been before the vessel was lost at sea. The error lies in the assertion, without the slightest "evidence of our senses" to support it, that sailor rats are genuine Zadkiels, and can peep into futurity by the aid of some supernatural power denied to mariners of the genus homo.

This superstition, nevertheless, is evidently one of considerable antiquity. Shakspere refers to it in the Tempest. Prospero, describing the vessel in which himself and daughter had been placed with the view to their certain destruction at sea says:—

They hurried us aboard a bark;
Bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepared
A rotten carcase of a boat, not rigged,
Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats
Instinctively had quit it.