Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 686

ERRORS CONCERNING ANIMALS AND PLANTS

Notwithstanding the vast strides that science has made of late years, it is curious to note the errors and misconceptions in various points of natural history that still linger in many parts of this and other countries. We may run over a few of these popular misconceptions. Not a few even among generally well-informed people still imagine that all Fungi are poisonous – including even the mushroom. Many more take it for granted that all serpents sting, and that the forked tongue is the weapon by which the 'sting' is given; the fact that it is forked seeming to afford them convincing proof of its deadly character. While there are many among the educated classes who would probably be puzzled if told, that there were other mammals besides four-footed animals and man.

There are still numbers of persons who believe that a horse-hair immersed for a time in water becomes vivified and is transformed into the curious animal known as the hair-eel; and who further imagine that this, acquiring greater thickness, becomes in process of time the common eel. This belief is universal among the uneducated, at least of the rural population, in many parts of the country. Nor is it confined to them. We have heard it stoutly maintained by a very intelligent man, of good education according to the ideas of education which were generally entertained fifty or sixty years ago; his only argument was one with which, if he had not been profoundly ignorant of natural history, he could not for a moment have deceived himself. He had often seen, in ditches or in stagnant pools, a moving hair-like thing, exactly resembling a black or dark-brown hair from a horse's mane, and no doubt it was a living thing, and an eel! And the other day we read among the answers to correspondents in a weekly paper, a very good advice to one who had directed attention to this same marvel – to try the experiment for himself with a horse-hair. But for any one who seeks information in the proper quarter, there is no need of such experiment; and the needful information is easily obtained. A few hours spent in the perusal of a book or two of natural history would make any man of common-sense ashamed that he had ever for a moment credited such an absurdity. The natural history of the eel is well known; and at no stage of its existence is it in form and appearance like the hair-eel. The natural history of the creature called by this name – the Gordius of naturalists – is also known. It is not a fish like the eel; it belongs to a class of parasitic worms very far below fishes in the scale of creation. It has no relation either to the eel or to a horse-hair. Yet the ploughman looks upon it with wonder, as he thinks of what he believes to be its origin; and the boys of the village school, when they find it in the gutter by the roadside or millpond, gather around it to gaze, and assure themselves by ocular observation of the truth of what they have heard. Ought they not to hear in the school itself what would disabuse their minds of so gross an error?

The erroneous opinion that all serpents are venomous is one that most probably originated with those who live in districts frequented only by the adder or viper; but it ought not to be entertained even by the most ignorant of the peasantry where the common snake is abundant, as it is in most parts of England. There every one ought to know that the latter is harmless, and that it is easily distinguished from the viper, which is poisonous. Curiously, too, the blind-worm or slow-worm, which, although not now ranked by naturalists among true serpents, but among the lizards, agrees with serpents in general appearance, and is in many places regarded with the utmost dread, being popularly believed to be as venomous as the viper itself. This is the case equally where it is common, as it is in many parts of England, and in Scotland where it is rare and found in comparatively few localities. 'During the summer of 1876,' says the Rev. J. G. Wood in his Illustrated Natural History, 'I passed some little time in the New Forest, and having gone round to the farms in the neighbourhood, begged to have all reptiles brought to me that were discovered during hay-making. In consequence, the supply of vipers and snakes was very large; and on one occasion a labourer came to my house bare-headed, his red face beaming with delight, and his manner evincing a consciousness of deserving valour. Between his hands he held his felt hat tightly crimpled together, and within the hat was discovered, after much careful manœuvring, the head of a blind-worm emerging from one of its folds. As I put out my hand to remove the creature, the man fairly screamed with horror; and even when I took it in my hand, and allowed it to play its tongue over the fingers, he could not believe that it was not poisonous. No argument could persuade that worthy man that the reptile was harmless, and nothing could induce him to lay a finger upon it; the prominent idea in his mind being evidently, not that the blind-worm had no poison, but that I was poison-proof.'

Similar to the popular opinion as to the blind-worm is that concerning the little active slender lizard common in moors, and that concerning the eft or newt, both of which are deemed extremely venomous, dangerous animals, whilst in reality both are quite harmless. We do not know how far the error as to the lizard prevails in England, but it is certainly very generally prevalent in Scotland, almost every rustic dreading what he calls an ask, that is a lizard, nearly as much as an adder. And a similar belief, equally erroneous, prevails in France as to another species of lizard. As to the newt, the prejudice against it exists everywhere, both in England and in Scotland, but it appears in its most exaggerated form where the state of education is lowest. 'During a residence of some years in a small village in Wiltshire,' says Mr Wood, in the work from which we have already quoted, 'I was told some very odd stories about the newt, and my own power of handling these terrible creatures without injury was evidently thought rather supernatural. Poison was the least of its crimes; for it was a general opinion among the rustics in charge of the farmyard, that my poor newts killed a calf at one end of a farmyard, through the mediumship of its mother, who saw them in a water-trough at the other end; and that one of these creatures bit a man on his thumb as he was cutting grass in the churchyard, and inflicted great damage on that member. The worst charge, however, was one which I heard from the same person. A woman, he told me, had gone to the brook to draw water, when an effert, as he called it, jumped out of the water, fastened on her arm, bit out a piece of flesh and spat fire into the wound, so that she afterwards lost her arm!'

Some birds are regarded as of evil omen. One does not wonder that this should be the case as to the raven and the owl. The colour, the habits, and the hoarse croak of the raven may be supposed naturally suggestive of unpleasant thoughts; and it is easy to understand how the imagination may be affected by the loud hooting of the owl when it breaks the stillness of the night amidst the loneliness of the forest. But in other cases where no such explanation offers itself, superstition seems wholly unaccountable. Thus, in the north of England, where the wheatear is not very common, the sight of it is supposed to presage death to the spectator, and the country-people kill the bird and destroy its eggs on every opportunity. In the north of England also, the hoopoe has the reputation of being an unlucky bird. In many parts of England it is accounted unlucky to see a solitary magpie, but lucky to see two together. One is supposed to presage sorrow; two, mirth; three, a wedding; and four, death!

In most parts of the United Kingdom, it is deemed unlucky to kill a robin, the red breast of the bird being attributed to its having been sprinkled with the blood of our Lord as He hung upon the cross; even as the cross on the back of the ass is connected in the rustic mind with our Lord's entry into Jerusalem riding upon an ass. According to the paper in the Book of Days, a common saying in Suffolk is, 'You must not take robin's eggs; if you do, you will get your legs broken.' The writer of it also relates the following anecdote. '"How badly you write!" I said one day to a boy in our parish school; "your hand shakes so that you can't hold the pen steady. Have you been running hard, or anything of that sort?" "No," replied the lad; "it always shakes: I once had a robin die in my hand; and they say that if a robin dies in your hand, it will always shake."' In some parts of England it is considered very unlucky to have no money in your pocket when you hear the cuckoo for the first time in the season. So perhaps it is, when it indicates the usual condition of the pocket.

Some insects, as well as birds, are deemed ominous of evil. There are many, even among educated people, who cannot hear the ticking of the little beetle called the death-watch without a feeling of fear; and among the vulgar, the belief is universal that it presages death in the house. And yet it is only the male insect knocking his head against the woodwork as a signal to his mate. In some parts of England the elephant hawk-moth is regarded not only as presaging, but as producing murrain. The death's-head moth is regarded with even greater aversion. This large moth, nowhere very common, has markings on the back and thorax somewhat resembling a skull and cross-bones; hence it inspires a superstitious terror, and its appearance is believed to be the harbinger of pestilence and woe. The ghost-moth inspires similar alarm. The female is of a dull brown colour; the upper surface of the male is of a silvery whiteness. In the evening the male makes his appearance, hovering over the grass in which the female lurks, often in churchyards where the grass is green and luxuriant. If alarmed, the insect disappears in an instant, settling on the ground; but by-and-by appears again hovering over the same spot. The ignorant rustic imagines it to be a ghost; and even if it were caught and shewn to him, he would be hard to be persuaded that it has no occult relation to the dead, or that its appearance is not ominous of evil to the living. Perhaps the most curious of all the popular superstitions concerning insects (and we could narrate many) is one which prevails, in Suffolk at least, as to bees. It is deemed unlucky that a stray swarm of bees should settle on your premises, unclaimed by the owner; it presages a death in the family within a year. A popular belief in Suffolk is that it is unlucky to kill a harvestman– a long-legged spider, very common in the fields in autumn – because if you do kill one there will be a bad harvest.

Some other errors in the natural history of animals have been long and widely prevalent, but have no superstitions connected with them. It will be enough merely to mention them. It is a common but a purely erroneous belief that the goatsucker and the hedgehog suck the teats of cows lying in the field – the latter being persecuted on that account. The woodpecker is ruthlessly killed because of the injury which it is supposed to do to trees by pecking holes in the wood and causing them to rot. The woodpecker pecks only where the wood is already decayed, which it does in quest of insects and their larvæ, and by pecking out the decayed wood, prevents the gangrene from extending, thus doing good to the tree and not harm.

The popular errors regarding plants are not so numerous, so wide-spread, or so remarkable as those regarding animals; nor do they seem anywhere to have taken so firm a hold of the minds of any class of the people, if we except perhaps the popular ideas regarding mushrooms and toadstools. Many people imagine that all fungi, except 'the mushroom,' are poisonous. It is not uncommon to hear the question asked even by educated people concerning some agaric: 'Is it a mushroom or a fungus?' – a question which shews that neither the meaning of the one term nor of the other is known. Every mushroom is a fungus; and although the term mushroom can never be applied to the minute fungi, such as blight, smut, mildew, and mould, it is very commonly applied to many of the larger kinds. Many fungi are not only not poisonous, but are wholesome and pleasant articles of food. Truffles and morels are edible fungi, and though they are found in England, they are not so common anywhere in Britain as in some parts of the continent of Europe. Some other species are also occasionally gathered and used in England; but in Scotland it may almost be said that none is ever gathered for use except the common mushroom (Agaricus campestris). Both in England and Scotland, however, far less use is made of the edible fungi than in France, Italy, Germany, and other continental countries, where they form a not inconsiderable part of the food of the people during summer and autumn; whilst with us, through ignorance and prejudice, they are allowed to rot and go to waste. It is proper to add, that of the larger kinds of fungi, many of the poisonous species are of the very group to which the common mushroom belongs; a group which possesses the same general form and structure with the common mushroom – a stalk surmounted by a cap, with gills on the under-side of the cap. Some excuse is therefore to be made for the general aversion prevalent in Great Britain to all kinds of fungi; and as long as we remain ignorant of the difference between the edible and the poisonous species, this aversion will naturally survive. But a wider diffusion of knowledge concerning the edible fungi is very desirable, and would enable many often to enjoy a cheap and agreeable repast. The superstitions connected with plants seem also to have possessed less vitality than those connected with animals. In fact, they have mostly quite died out. Perhaps the most tenacious of life was that concerning the rowan-tree or mountain-ash. Our forefathers universally regarded this tree as possessing a wondrous power of affording protection from witches and from evil spirits, and for this reason it was planted close by every dwelling. Nowhere was this belief more firmly entertained than in Scotland. Within our recollection, an aged man who acted as postman in a country town in the south of Scotland, habitually carried a piece of rowan-tree or mountain-ash in his pocket, as a fancied protection against malevolent influences. Traces of this superstition have now, we believe, disappeared. The rowan-tree is now cultivated for the sake of its beautiful clustering berries, from which a pleasantly bitter jelly may be produced, as a condiment to be eaten with roast-mutton, preferable to the jelly from red currants. This is what we call putting the mountain-ash to a better purpose than superstitiously carrying morsels of it in the pocket to avert some imaginary personal injury. Let us hope that, by the progress of education, the minds even of the humblest classes of the people will erelong be freed from the fear of dangers merely imaginary, and elevated above the pitiful superstitions by which they are still too frequently enslaved and degraded. Yet it is probable that a considerable time must elapse before this desirable result can be fully attained. To many the errors with which their superstitions are connected, and the superstitions themselves, appear supported by a great weight of authority, such as they have been accustomed most to respect – the authority of their seniors, and of those who are looked upon as the oracles of their little circle. And if they have not instances of their own observation to adduce in justification of their beliefs, they have been assured of instances enough that have come under the observation of others.

THE QUICHENOT LAMP-FORGE

A brief account of this new lamp-forge, included in 'Useful Items From France,' which appeared in our columns (No. 668, October 14, 1876), having occasioned numerous inquiries as to this novel source of heat, a more detailed description of its principle and mode of action may probably prove acceptable. The apparatus, of which M. Quichenot, a French civil engineer, is the inventor, is designed to supply a want that has been long felt, that of a blow-pipe and furnace combined, easy of transport, applicable to the arts, or for experimental purposes, and which does its work cheaply. Requiring no special fittings, it can be used where gas cannot, and yields, it may be added, a heat considerably greater.

The so-called carburator, or actual lamp-forge, is composed of a shell or chamber of cast-iron, with a false bottom or double compartment, into which air is to be forced by the aid of a smith's or circular bellows. On this shell stands an annular vessel of cast-iron, containing petroleum, supplied from a reservoir of equal level, by the help of a pipe. The heat of the lamp-forge keeps the petroleum in ebullition, and its vapour pours into the iron carburator, mixes with the compressed air, and rushes burning through a large copper funnel, capped by a thick tube in refractory fire-clay, and which contains the hottest portion of the flame; which is then suffered to play on the crucible or cupel containing the object to be heated, and which is surrounded by a cover or screen, to prevent the cooling effects of the atmosphere.

The blow-pipe attached to the apparatus is a flexible one, the interior being fitted with a copper spiral reaching to within one-third of an inch of the nozzle, and which renders the flame shorter and more compact than is the case with blow-pipes of the usual construction. The flame can be rendered oxidising or deoxidising at pleasure. For solders of every kind this blow-pipe is believed to be well adapted. The miniature lamp-forge is capable of melting, in ten minutes, fourteen ounces of copper, nickel, or cast-iron, or about twelve ounces of wrought-iron. The heat, therefore, is only equalled by that of the larger-sized table-furnaces fed with coke and urged by a continuous blast of air. But the action of these last-mentioned furnaces is brief, and when their supply of fuel is consumed, time is wasted in cooling and recharging them. The great merit of M. Quichenot's invention is, that the lamp-forge can be kept, without difficulty, at work for a considerable time, care being taken to guard against any heating of the petroleum in the reservoir of supply.

We have not been able to ascertain if these forges are to be seen in England; but we believe that information may be had, and the apparatus seen, by applying to M. le Directeur, Fabrique des Forges de Vulcain, 5 Rue Saint-Denis, Place du Châtelet, Paris.

notes

1

Human Nature: a Mosaic of Sayings, Maxims, Opinions, and Reflections on Life and Character. By David Mitchell. Smith, Elder, & Co.

2

By extra payment to the official at 'the window,' a letter though some minutes late will be received and despatched.