le sign of death,
as is also the squeaking of one behind the bed of an invalid, or the
appearance or apparition of a white mouse running across the room. To
meet with a shrew-mouse, in going a journey, is reckoned ominous of
evil. The country people have an idea that the harvest-mouse is unable
to cross a path which has been trod by man. Whenever they attempt, they
are immediately, as my informant expressed it, "struck dead." This, they
say, accounts for the numbers which on a summer's evening may be found
lying dead on the verge of the field footpaths, without any external
wound or apparent cause for their demise.

_Snakes._--There is a very prevalent belief that a snake can never die
till the sun is down. Cut or hack it as you will, it will never die till
sunset. This idea has evidently its source in the amazing vitality
common to the species.

_Poultry._--The crowing of a hen bodes evil, and is frequently followed
by the death of some member of the family. When, therefore, Dame Partlet
thus experiments upon the note of her mate, she pays her head as the
price of her temerity, a complete severance of the offending member
being supposed to be the only way of averting the threatened calamity.
No house, it is said, can thrive whose hens are addicted to this kind of
amusement. Hence the old proverb often quoted in this district:

"A whistling woman and a crowing hen,
Is neither fit for God nor men."

According to Pluquet, the Normans have a similar belief, and a saying
singularly like the English one:

"Un Poule qui chante le coq, et une fille qui siffle, portent
malheur dans la maison."

Before the death of a farmer his poultry frequently go to roost at
noon-day, instead of at the usual time. When the cock struts up to the
door and sounds his clarion on the threshold, the housewife is warned
that she may soon expect a stranger. In what is technically termed
"setting a hen," care is taken that the nest be composed of an odd
number of eggs. If even, the chickens would not prosper. Each egg is
always marked with a little black cross, ostensibly for the purpose of
distinguishing them from the others, but also supposed to be
instrumental in producing good chickens, and preventing any attack from
the weasel or other farm-yard marauders. The last egg the hen lays is
carefully preserved, its possession being supposed to operate as a charm
upon the well-doing of the poultry. In some cases, though less commonly,