In "Credulities Past and Present," it is stated that "in Durham there is a superstition that if any person was bewitched, the author of the evil might be discovered by the following means: To steal a black hen, take out the heart, stick it full of pins, and roast it at midnight. The 'double' of the witch would come and nearly pull the door down. If the 'double' was not seen, any one of the neighbors who had passed a remarkably bad night was fixed upon!"
Led by a Gander.
In Germany an aged blind woman was led to church every Sunday by a gander, which dragged her along, holding her gown in his beak. As soon as the old woman was seated in her pew the gander retired to the church-yard to feed upon the grass, and when the service was ended he conducted his mistress to her home.—Menault.
Crows Lost in a Fog.
The Hartford Times tells a curious story of a flock of crows in that vicinity who recently lost their way in a fog. They lost their bearings at a point directly above the South Green, in Hartford. For a good while they hovered there, coming low down, circling and diving aimlessly about, like a blindfolded person in "blind man's buff," and keeping up a hoarse cawing and general racket beyond description. It was plain enough that of the entire company each individual crow was not only puzzled and bothered, but highly indignant, and inclined to utter "cuss words" in his frantic attempts to be heard above the general din, and tell the others which way to go. Once or twice the whole flock swept down to a distance of not more than one hundred feet above the street. Finally, after going around for many times, they sailed away in a southerly direction, evidently having got some clue to the way out of the fog, or desperately resolved to go somewhere till they could see daylight.
The Peacock at Home.
Peacocks are found in almost all parts of India and Siam, and the multitudes in which they occur in some districts is wonderful. Colonel Williamson, in his "Oriental Field Sports," says: "About the passes in the Jungletery district whole woods were covered with the beautiful plumage, to which a rising sun imparted additional brilliancy. I speak within bounds when I assert that there could not have been less than 1200 or 1500 pea-fowls, of various sizes, within sight of the spot where I stood." Sir James Emerson Tennent says, in his work on Ceylon, "that in some of the unfrequented portions of the eastern province, to which Europeans rarely resort, and where the pea-fowl are unmolested by the natives, their number is so extraordinary that, regarded as game, it ceased to be sport to destroy them; and their cries at early morning are so tumultuous and incessant as to banish sleep, and amount to an actual inconvenience."
Story of the Dodo.
This extinct bird was a native of Mauritius, in the Indo-African Ocean, and was first described by Van Neck, a Dutchman, in 1598, in which year a living specimen was embarked for Holland, but died on its way. This specimen is supposed to have been preserved at Leyden; and one of the feet is believed to be that in the British Museum. Several successive voyagers mention the bird, down to Canche, in 1638, in which year a living dodo was brought to England by Sir Hamon l'Estrange, who describes the back as of "dunn or deare colour." It was exhibited for money in London, in a house which bore a figure of the bird represented on canvas. This specimen has been traced to Tradescant's Museum at Lambeth, whence it was conveyed, in 1682, to Oxford by Ashmole. The body and a leg were destroyed by vermin before 1775, but the other leg and the head are preserved to this day in the Ashmolean Museum, in which place there also is a large drawing of a dodo, taken from nature, by John Savery. It was not related to the ostrich or the vulture, as many have supposed, but was closely allied to the pigeons and the solitaire bird seen by Leguat in the Island of Rodrigeux in 1691.—Wells.