---- Rectory, Hereford.
_White Livers._--Can any correspondent give some information as to the
popular superstition of _white livers_, or refer to any author that
alludes to it in any way. In a recent account of poisonings in France,
by a woman Named Helène Jagado, it is stated that though for a long
time she was not suspected to be an actual murderess, yet "the frequency
of deaths in the families by whom she was engaged excited a suspicion
among the peasantry that there was something in her nature fatal to
those who were near her; and they said that _her liver was white_, it
being believed, in that part of France, that persons who are dangerous
have _white livers_." In the midland counties there is a similar saying
among the lower classes, and I have heard it said of an individual who
had married and lost several wives by death, that he had a white liver.
A young woman once told me that she had been advised not to marry a
certain suitor, because he had a white liver, and she would be dead
within a year. "White-livered rascal" is a common term of reproach in
Gloucestershire. What is the origin and explanation of the supposed
_white liver_?