Some Catholics, in consequence of the John Doree having a dark spot, like a finger-mark, on each side of the head, believe this to have been the fish, and not the Haddock, from which the Apostle Peter took the tribute-money, by order of our Saviour. The modern Greeks denominate it "the fish of St. Christopher," from a legend which relates that it was trodden on by that saint, when he bore his divine burden across an arm of the sea. Some species of Echini, fossilized, and seen frequently in Norfolk, are termed by the ignorant peasantry, and considered, Fairy Loaves, to take which, when found, is highly unlucky.
The Amphisbaena, from its faculty of moving backwards or forwards at pleasure, has been thought to have a head at either extremity of its reptile body, but close inspection proves this opinion false. The fascinating power of the Rattlesnake, of which so many stories have in times past been related, and which was asserted to exist in its glittering eyes, has been of late years resolved into that extreme nervous terror of its victim (at sight of so certain a foe) which deprives it of the power of motion, and causes it to fall, an unresisting prey, into the reptile's jaws. We may here pause to observe, en passant, that the antipathy which people of all ages and nations have felt against every reptile of the serpent tribe, from the harmless worm to the hosts of deadly "dragons" which infest the torrid zone, and the popular opinion that all are venomous, often in spite of experience, seems to be not so much superstition, as a terror of the species, implanted, since the fall, in our bosoms, by the same Divine Being who at that period pronounced the serpent to be the most accursed beast of the field.
(To be continued.)
SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.
TAIT'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
Nothing if not political appears to be the order of the new magazine and other literary enterprises of the present day. Is this good policy in itself? it may be so from the vivifying aid it lends to the springs of imaginative writing. We have therefore no right to complain of the leaven of Mr. Tait's Magazine: it is anything but dull: e.g. the life and jauntiness of the following paper is very pleasant, shrewd, and clever:
The Martinet.
The "Martinet" is the name of a genus, not of a species; the title of a race variously feathered, but having specific qualities in common. There is your military martinet, your clerical martinet, your legal martinet, and the martinet of common life, ("Gallicrista fastidiosa communis," Linnaeus would class him,) who is to the others what the house-sparrow is to the rest of his tribe. It is with him alone we have to do. The "martinet" is a person who is all his life violently busied in endeavouring to be a perfect gentleman, and who almost succeeds. He misses the point by over-stepping it. He is like one of those greyhounds which outrun the hare fleetly enough, but cannot "take" her when they have done so. They have a little too much speed, and a little too little tact. The martinet is always bent upon thinking, saying, doing, and having, every thing after a nicer fashion than other people, until his nicety runs into downright mannerism; all his ideas become "clipped taffeta," and all his eggs are known to have "two yolks." He rarely comes of age or is thoroughly ripe till near forty, before which he may be a little of the precise fop, and after which he changes to the somewhat foppish precisian, which is the best definition of him. He would be an excellent member of society were he not a little too nice for its every-day work, which, to speak a truth in metaphor, will not always admit of white gloves. He is remarkably consistent in all his proceedings, however, and the outward man is a perfect and complete type of the inward, and vice versa. His soul is never out of pumps and silk stockings, and picks its way amidst the little mental puddles and cross-roads of this world with a chariness of step, which is at once edifying and amusing. Of inward show he is not less "elaborate" than of outward; and, though a descendant of Eve, takes equal care of the clothing of both mind and body.
Were his tailor to be abandoned enough to attempt to palm upon him a coat of the very best Yorkshire, instead of the very best Wiltshire broad-cloth, (an enormity of which—horresco referens—he was once very near being the victim,) the one would be sure to lose, if discovered, the best of his customers, and the other the best of a month's sleep. If he wears a wig, his expenditure with his peruquier is never less than five-and-twenty guineas a-year. His cigars, though he smokes little, cost him nearly as much. His hat is water-proof; his stop-watch and repeater are of a scapement that never varies more than six seconds in the twelve months from the time-piece at the Observatory at Greenwich, where he has a friend, who is so good as sometimes to compare notes with him. By the advice of his boot-maker—who, by the way, has some knowledge of the length of his foot—he never puts on a new pair until they are at least a year old; and he parted with his last footboy because he one day discovered a perceptible difference between the polish of the right and left foot. In winter, he wears and recommends cork soles. His toilet is no sinecure; and on the table are always to be found, besides his dressing-box, which contains an assortment of combs, scissors, tweezers, pomades, and essences, not easily equalled, a bottle of "Eau de Cologne, veritable," a Packwood and Criterion strop; a case of gold-mounted razors, (the best in England,) which he bought, nearly thirty years ago, of the successor of "Warren," in the Strand, and a silvered shaving-pot, upon a principle of his own, redolent of Rigges' "patent violet-scented soap." His net-silk purse is ringed with gold at one end, and with silver at the other; and although not much of a snuff-taker, he always carries a box, on the lid of which smiles the portrait of the once celebrated and beautiful, though now somewhat forgotten, Duchess of D——, or the equally resplendent Lady Emily M——.