hat has been written by Meadows
and other admirers of the examination system, a man can be what he
pleases by paying for it; and the coveted button, which is nominally
the reward of learning and ability, is more often the prize of wealthy
ignorance.

The saints who are alluded to above are the saints of the whole
country, as distinct from those who for special deeds are locally
worshipped. To this innumerable class frequent allusion is made in
these Tales.

Touching the remedy of the fox's liver, prescribed in the tale, I may
add that there would be nothing strange in this to a person acquainted
with the Chinese pharmacopoeia, which the Japanese long exclusively
followed, although they are now successfully studying the art of
healing as practised in the West. When I was at Peking, I saw a
Chinese physician prescribe a decoction of three scorpions for a child
struck down with fever; and on another occasion a groom of mine,
suffering from dysentery, was treated with acupuncture of the tongue.
The art of medicine would appear to be at the present time in China
much in the state in which it existed in Europe in the sixteenth
century, when the excretions and secretions of all manner of animals,
saurians, and venomous snakes and insects, and even live bugs, were
administered to patients. "Some physicians," says Matthiolus, "use the
ashes of scorpions, burnt alive, for retention caused by either renal
or vesical calculi. But I have myself thoroughly experienced the
utility of an oil I make myself, whereof scorpions form a very large
portion of the ingredients. If only the region of the heart and all
the pulses of the body be anointed with it, it will free the patients
from the effects of all kinds of poisons taken by the mouth, corrosive
ones excepted." Decoctions of Egyptian mummies were much commended,
and often prescribed with due academical solemnity; and the bones of
the human skull, pulverized and administered with oil, were used as a
specific in cases of renal calculus. (See Petri Andreae Matthioli
Opera, 1574.)

These remarks were made to me by a medical gentleman to whom I
mentioned the Chinese doctor's prescription of scorpion tea, and they
seem to me so curious that I insert them for comparison's sake.

THE BADGER'S MONEY

It is a common saying among men, that to forget favours received is
the part of a bird or a beast: an ungrateful man will be ill spoken of
by all the world. And yet even birds and b