A WORLD OF WONDERS.
A WORLD OF WONDERS,
WITH
ANECDOTES AND OPINIONS
CONCERNING
POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS.
EDITED BY
ALBANY POYNTZ.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.
1845.
LONDON:
Printed by Schulze and Co., 13, Poland Street.
PREFACE.
It is surprising, considering the gigantic strides effected by modern
science, how many of the errors and prejudices engendered by the ignorance
of the dark ages remain current in the world in its present days of
enlightenment. Like the winged seeds of certain weeds, their light and
impalpable nature renders them only the more difficult of extirpation.
A cursory review and refutation of these popular prejudices and vulgar
errors has been attempted in the following Manual. A more scientific
analysis of so spreading a field would have expanded into a Cyclopædia.
But the ancient traditions and modern instances collected in its pages may
afford the reader amusement and instruction for the passing hour, as well
as an incentive to more profound investigations in hours to come.
LONDON,
NOVEMBER, 1845.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
LONGEVITY OF ANIMALS 1-10
CHAPTER II.
INCOMBUSTIBLE MEN 11-22
CHAPTER III.
VENTRILOQUISTS 23-31
CHAPTER IV.
POPE JOAN AND THE WANDERING JEW 32-36
CHAPTER V.
THE FABLES OF HISTORY 37-45
CHAPTER VI.
MELONS AND MONSTERS 46-53
CHAPTER VII.
THE JEWS 54-60
CHAPTER VIII.
VERBAL DELICACY 61-64
CHAPTER IX.
AEROLITES AND MIRACULOUS SHOWERS 65-74
CHAPTER X.
NOSTRUMS AND SPECIFICS 75-82
CHAPTER XI.
PHYSIOGNOMISTS 83-95
CHAPTER XII.
LAST WORDS OF DYING PERSONS 96-98
CHAPTER XIII.
THE ANTIPODES--MORNING AND EVENING DEW 99-102
CHAPTER XIV.
PERPETUAL LAMPS AND ARCHIMEDES 103-109
CHAPTER XV.
THE LYNX AND THE CAMELEON 110-115
CHAPTER XVI.
WILD WOMEN 116-118
CHAPTER XVII.
SYBILS 119-123
CHAPTER XVIII.
FORTUNE-TELLERS AND CHIROMACY 124-130
CHAPTER XIX.
ALBERTUS MAGNUS AND NOSTRADAMUS 131-137
CHAPTER XX.
LEECHES, SERPENTS, AND THE SONG OF THE DYING SWAN 138-146
CHAPTER XXI.
NEGROES 147-160
CHAPTER XXII.
FASCINATION; OR, THE ART OF PLEASING 161-170
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE 171-177
CHAPTER XXIV.
GIANTS AND DWARFS 178-183
CHAPTER XXV.
ASTROLOGY 184-190
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE MOON AND LUNAR INFLUENCE 191-193
CHAPTER XXVII.
APPARITIONS 194-201
CHAPTER XXVIII.
NOBILITY AND TRADE 202-208
CHAPTER XXIX.
MERIT AND POPULARITY 209-219
CHAPTER XXX.
COMETS 220-223
CHAPTER XXXI.
POPULAR ERRORS 224-232
CHAPTER XXXII.
DREAMS 233-237
CHAPTER XXXIII.
PREJUDICES ATTACHED TO CERTAIN ANIMALS 238-243
CHAPTER XXXIV.
CONTENT AND COURTESY 244-248
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE DIVINING ROD 249-254
CHAPTER XXXVI.
BEES AND ANTS 255-260
CHAPTER XXXVII.
PREPOSSESSIONS AND ANTIPATHIES 261-265
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE INFLUENCE OF BELLS UPON THUNDER STORMS 266-269
CHAPTER XXXIX.
SMALL POX AND VACCINATION 270-273
CHAPTER XL.
PRECOCIOUS AND CLEVER CHILDREN 274-279
CHAPTER XLI.
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 280-282
CHAPTER XLII.
PREJUDICES OF THE FRENCH 283-288
CHAPTER XLIII.
MONSTROUS BIRTHS 289-293
CHAPTER XLIV.
THE ICHNEUMON AND THE HALCYON 294-295
CHAPTER XLV.
SORCERERS AND MAGICIANS 296-300
CHAPTER XLVI.
MALE AND FEMALE 301-307
CHAPTER XLVII.
MINOR SUPERSTITIONS 308-309
CHAPTER XLVIII.
SOMNAMBULISM 310-314
CHAPTER XLIX.
A FEW MORE WORDS ABOUT GHOSTS AND VAMPIRES, AND
LOUP-GAROUX 315-344
CHAPTER L.
APOCRYPHAL ANIMALS 345-352
CHAPTER LI.
PROFESSIONS ESTEEMED INFAMOUS 353-356
CHAPTER LII.
SUPERNATURAL HUMAN BEINGS 357-361
A WORLD OF WONDERS.
CHAPTER I.
LONGEVITY OF ANIMALS.
Most scholars are familiar with the quotation "cervi dicuntur diutissime
vivere," which has rendered proverbial the longevity of the stag. Among
birds, crows and parrots have also been said to attain miraculous length
of days; among fishes, the carp and pike; among reptiles, the tortoise.
But modern investigation has sufficiently proved that the number of
centuries, variously assigned as the natural age of these birds, beasts
and fishes, was, in the first instance, the invention of poets and
fabulists, carelessly adopted as authentic by lovers of the marvellous.
It is now ascertained that aloes frequently flower three times in a
hundred years, and that three generations of the stag are included
within the same space of time.
Hesiod, an ancient Greek poet whose works have only partially reached us,
was the first to institute a comparative inquiry into the age of the crow
and the stag. Hesiod assigns eighty-six years as the average span of human
life; yet he asserts that the rook attains eight hundred and sixty-four
years, and the crow thrice as many. Towards the stag, he is still more
liberal; declaring that these animals have been known to attain their
thirty-fifth century. Considering the age we assign to the world itself
when Hesiod flourished in it, no great experience as to the average
existence of so sempiternal an animal could have influenced his opinion.
According to many ancient writers besides Hesiod, the stag is the longest
lived of animals; and the Egyptians have adopted it as the emblem of
longevity. Pliny relates that one hundred years after the death of
Alexander, several stags were taken in the different forests of Macedonia,
to whose necks that great monarch had, with his own hand, attached
collars. This extension of existence is, however, scarcely worth
recording, in comparison with the instance commemorated by French
historians, of a stag taken in the forest of Senlis, in the year 1037;
having a collar round its neck on which was inscribed, "Cæsar hoc me
donavit."
A miraculous interpretation was assigned to this inscription, which has
consequently formed the ground-work of a popular error in France. The
"Cæsar" of the legend was admitted, without further examination, to be
Julius Cæsar, thereby allotting ten centuries as the age of the animal;
nay, seventy-seven years more, seeing that Julius Cæsar conquered Gaul
forty-two years before the birth of Christ. Nevertheless since the days of
Julius, the title of Cæsar had been bestowed on a sufficient number of
imperial potentates to explain the inscription on the collar upon more
rational grounds: the Cæsar who had thus adorned the stag being in all
probability its contemporary. But this was too simple an interpretation to
be acceptable to those wonder-seeking times.
Aristotle decided the age of the stag, not from the showing of poets and
traditions, but from the indications of experiment. Having dissected a
considerable number of these animals, he pronounced their ordinary age to
be was from thirty to thirty-six years. Buffon was of a similar opinion,
which has been adopted by most succeeding naturalists. It has been
established as a law of comparative physiology, that the life of a
mammiferous animal is in proportion to its period of gestation, and the
duration of its growth. The sheep and goat, who bear their young five
months, and whose growth lasts two years, live from eight to ten, The
horse, which is borne ten months, and whose growth requires from five to
six years, lives from thirty to forty. We are, of course, speaking of the
horse in its natural state, uninjured by premature and excessive labour.
When submitted to the hands of man, the noble animal is condemned to
premature old age, by the application of spur and thong before it attains
sufficient strength for the unnatural speed it is compelled to attempt,
and the burthens it is forced to bear. Nor, even under these
circumstances, is it allowed to attain the span of life assigned by
nature; the hand of the knacker being put in request to end its days, the
moment its services cease to be profitable to its master.
The camel, which is borne ten months, and requires four years for its
bodily development, usually attains the age of fifty. The elephant,
requiring a year's gestation, attains the climax of its growth at thirty,
and lives to a hundred. The gestation of a stag, therefore, being but of
eight months, there is no reason to infer a deviation in its favour from
the laws governing the nature of all other animals of the same genus.
"The stag," says Buffon, "whose growth requires six years, lives from
thirty to forty. The prodigious age originally ascribed to this animal, is
a groundless invention of the poets, of which Aristotle demonstrated the
absurdity."
A variety of instances of the miraculous longevity of animals may be found
in the works of the early German naturalists. It is related in the
collection of Voyages and Travels of Malte Brun, on the showing of these
authorities, that the Emperor Frederick II. having been presented with a
singularly fine pike, caused it to be thrown into a pond adjoining his
palace of Kaiserslautern, after affixing to it a collar bearing the
following Greek inscription: "I am the first fish cast into this pond by
the hands of the Emperor Frederick II.; October 5th, 1230."
After remaining two hundred and sixty years in the pond, the pike was
taken in 1497, and carried to Heidelberg, to be served at the table of the
Elector Philip; when the collar and inscription were subjected to the
examination of the curious. The pike, at that time, weighed three hundred
and fifty pounds, and was nineteen feet in length--a miraculous fish in
every respect; for how are we to suppose that an inscription upon an
elastic collar would otherwise remain legible at the close of several
centuries? This story is evidently one of the marvels that figure so
profusely in the chronicles of old Germany during the middle ages.
It has, however, often been asserted that aquatic animals are longer-lived
than others, from being cold-blooded, and losing nothing from
transpiration; though, from their peculiar nature, the fact is very
difficult of demonstration. Fordyce made some curious experiments upon the
tenacity of life in fishes; by placing gold fishes in a variety of vessels
filled with water; which, at first, he refreshed every day; then, every
third day, with which refreshment, and without other nourishment, they
lived for fifteen months. He next distilled the water; increased the
proportion of air in the vessels; and closed the apertures, so that no
insect could possibly penetrate. Nevertheless, the fish lived as before,
and were in good condition.
The experimentalist now decided that the decomposition of the air afforded
them sufficient nutriment; by this theory invalidating the proverb 'that
it is impossible to live on air.'
Without impugning the authenticity of these experiments, or the easy
sustenance of fishes, we may be permitted to observe that a variety of
circumstances are unfavourable to the fact of their miraculous longevity.
In the first place, their organization, especially that of the carp which
is supposed to be one of the longest-lived of fishes, is peculiarly
delicate; and the muscular effort to move in an element eight hundred
times heavier than atmospheric air, must be apt to exhaust the energies of
life. Such are the suggestions of common sense; too often unavailing
against the marvels of tradition, accepted by the credulity of mankind.
The Parisians delight in boasting of the age of the venerable carp in the
reservoirs at Fontainebleau and Chantilly; the former especially, as
contemporary with Francis I. Other credulous persons declare that there
exist gigantic carp many centuries old, in the water beneath the Cathedral
of Strasbourg--a fact easily asserted because impossible to disprove.
With respect to the tame old carp at Fontainebleau, which come to the
surface of the water to be fed by every visitor to that curious old
palace, the only grounds for asserting their great age is the inconclusive
fact, that there were tame old grey carp in the moat of Fontainebleau in
the reign of Francis I., as at the present time. But who is to prove that
they are identical? There were also troops and courtiers at Fontainebleau
at both epochs, whom it would be just as reasonable to assert were the
same persons. The only difference is that the generations of men are
visibly renewed; while the carp in the old moat slip away unnoticed, and
are succeeded by a younger fry.
The longevity of certain species of the feathered kind has been just as
much exaggerated as that of the stag and the carp. Willoughby states in
his work on Ornithology, that a friend of his possessed a gander eighty
years of age; which in the end became so ferocious that they were forced
to kill it, in consequence of the havock it committed in the barn-yard.
He also talks of a swan three centuries old; and several celebrated
parrots are said to have attained from one hundred to one hundred and
fifty years.
The experiments of able naturalists afford the best answer to such
statements. According to the best established authorities, pigeons, fowls,
and ducks, live, in a natural state, from ten to twelve years. Magpies,
crows, and jays, evince symptoms of caducity at the same age. Professor
Hufeland, of Jena, who has devoted considerable time and attention to the
study of the duration of life, assures us that the great eagle, and other
birds of the larger kind, such as the pelican and ostrich, are very
long-lived and of vigorous constitution. Specimens of the eagle tribe have
been known, however, to survive in a menagerie upwards of a hundred years.
Hufeland relates that a Mr. Selwand, of London, received in 1793, from the
Cape of Good Hope, a falcon wearing a golden collar inscribed "To His
Majesty, King James of England, 1610." The bird was supposed to have
belonged to James I., and having escaped from its keepers, in order to
avoid recapture, to have traversed Europe and Africa, to end its days in a
state of nature among the Hottentots! Destiny, however, was not to be
defied; and the prisoner was recaptured in its old age, and sent back to
England. This incident probably originated in a hoax upon the credulity
of Mr. Selwand, practised by one of his colonial correspondents. Moreover,
Hufeland, after publishing his conviction of the prodigious longevity of
the eagle tribe, was himself very likely to become the object of one of
those mystifications, for which the supporters of new theories are
considered fair game.
Credulity is unfortunately a weakness common to the human race; and a
tendency to exaggeration is scarcely less universal. Between the two
failings, monstrous stories obtain circulation; and as it is easier to
assent than examine, the world becomes overrun with errors and prejudices.
A curious anecdote related from mouth to mouth, becomes exaggerated into a
miracle. Thus, as regards the longevity of parrots, a bird of this species
which happens to survive three generations of the same family, though the
period may not exceed thirty years, is talked of in the circle of their
acquaintance as a Nestor or Methuselah; till, at last, from exaggeration
to exaggeration, its age becomes converted into a miracle. No one,
however, can personally attest the age of a parrot beyond fifty or sixty
years. All the rest must be hearsay.
Among curious examples of longevity in animals, the dog of Ulysses is
cited, by many ancient authors, for the intelligence displayed in his
recognition of his master after twenty years' absence. A mule, which
lived to the age of ninety years, at Athens, has also been frequently
cited.
The historian, Mézéray, relates, on the authority of Flodard, that Loup
Asnard, Duke of Aquitaine, on coming to do homage to Raoul, King of
France, about the beginning of the tenth century, appeared before the
monarch mounted on a horse a hundred years old. Such exceptions, however,
even if authentic, tend no more to prove the longevity of dogs, horses or
mules, than the incontestible fact that certain men, even in modern times,
have survived to the age of a century and a half, tend to establish that
period as the span of human existence.