intended to deceive your patrons, or to cast any reflections on your ability to answer them, for the precepts and observations you have given in your preceding numbers thoroughly demonstrate your knowledge of natural philosophy; but rather to some accident they have slipped your memory. I must say I have been highly pleased with your Almanack, and posterity anticipate your further usefulness as a man of reading and observation. I doubt not but that your Almanack will very soon exceed in circulation any other published in the United States, and I may venture to say, without flattery, it now is equal to any in estimation. Therefore, SIR, I humbly hope, that in your next number (viz. X.) I shall see your answers to the above questions. I am, Sir, with sincere Esteem, Franklin, March 10, 1801. Your must humble Servant, ANSWERS. To the MISCELLANEOUS QUESTIONS in the FARMER'S Answer to Question 1st. I AGREE with the best modern astronomers, that the Sun is an immoveable centre, round which the planets (of which the earth is one) move by different revolutions. But the figure, which the earth annually describes, is not circular, but elliptical or oval; which is the reason why it does not continue equidistant from the Sun. But as once a year it travels round the Sun, so in the compass of 24 hours it moves round its own axis; whence arises the alternate succession of day and night. 2d. Fie! join a lawyer with such company; they hold no comparison with each other! I know what you'll say, that the miller's clacks, and the lawyer's clacks are in perpetual motion, with the like sound and sense; and that as the first grinds down your corn, the other grinds down the land it grows upon. But then the lawyer is in a fair way to break the miller. You may urge too, that the tailor and lawyer equally ruin you with their long bills; but then, consider, the tailor's bill is full of fustiannonsense, scrolls, blots, and repetitions of the same things, differently placed, and, by consequence, not worthy your understanding; whilst your lawyer, in his cramp law terms, is as much above your understanding, and therefore preferable and tho' you know not what you give your money for to either, yet, certainly, any would. give more for a parcel of fine significant words, than for so many false spelt blunders. 'T is true, they both furnish you with suits; but which is the best workman, the tailor, who must have matter to work upon, or the lawyer, who can make a long suit out of nothing? Your tailor's suit is gone in half a year, but the lawyer's will last often to your posterity; suppose he hurries you out of breath upon a wrong scent, yet then he will give you time by a writ of error or demurrer, to recover yourself, and keep in fast friendship to you whilst you have the strength of one fee left. And though he runs some out of their estates, he often gives to others other people's estates, which is yet some compensation. Say, he then manages the cause accordingly, which is something analogical to equity; nay, put the worst, that you are quite ruined; he tells you it comes from your own mis-informing of him, which, whether you apprehend or not, you ought to believe, as supposing he best understands what belongs to his own business. Now your miller and tailor are by no means capacitated for such fine qualifications as these. The replies to the third and fourth questions need not be reprinted, since they are less interesting nowadays than they were in 1802. We may close this brief chapter with a quotation from the diary of Dr. Nathaniel Ames the younger, himself a composer of almanacs, which belongs to this same year: A Lawyer in every man's mess here, nothing will go with Fools without a Lawyer, but from good company they are excluded! or if they get in, they spoil it.1 1 April 3, 1802, Dedham Historical Register, XI, 103. THE TOAD AND THE SPIDER H ERE is an item of natural history from Rhode Island. It is extracted from the Almanac for 1798: A TOAD was seen fighting with a spider in Rhode-Island; and when the former was bit, it hopped to a plantain leaf, bit off a piece, and then engaged with the spider again. After this had been repeated sundry times, a spectator pulled up the plantain, and put it out of the way. The toad, on being bit again, jumped to where the plantain had stood; and as it was not to be found, she hopped round several times, turned over on her back, swelled up, and died immediately. This is an evident demonstration that the juice of the plantain is an antidote against the bites of those venomous insects.1 Nothing could be simpler or more straightforward than this anecdote. It bears every appearance of being a mere bit of local observation. Yet there is a good deal to be learned about the story, for it turns out, on examination, to be a variant of a widespread piece of legendary lore. Van Helmont, the great Flemish chemist and medical reformer, who died in 1644, may be summoned as the first witness. In his treatise on the Plague he tells almost exactly the same tale, on the authority of a noble lady of his acquaintance: 1 Plantain, by the way, is said by Josselyn, in his New England's Rarities Discovered, 1672, to be one of the herbs that "have sprung up since the English planted and kept cattle in New England." The Indians, he tells us, call it "Englishman's foot, as though produced by their treading" (ed. Tuckerman, p. 217). And indeed the Lady of Rommerswal Toparchesse in Ecchove, a noble, affined, and honest Matron, related to me in candour of spirit, that she once beheld a duel between a Spider, and a Toad, for a whole afternoon: For this, when he felt himself to be stricken by the Spider descending from above, and that he was presently swollen in his head, he runs to an herb which he licked, and being most speedily cured, his swelling asswaged; from whence he setting upon a repeated fight, was again also smitten in his head, and hastened unto the same herb; And when as the thing had now the third time happened, the Spectatresse being tired, cut off the Plant with her knife (but it was the Plantain with a narrow leaf) and when as the Toad returned thither the fourth time, and found not the herb, he most speedily swelled all over, and being sore smitten with terrour, presently died: But he betook not himself unto the neighboring plants of the same Plantain, and those frequently growing (for the image of the conception of fear, and sorrow, produceth a speedy death, the hope of a most speedy remedy perisheth in a most furious disease) for when he found not his own Plantain, he who before encountred from a hope of presently recovering, forthwith despairing through fear and an idea of terrour, died.1 Van Helmont explains the remissness of the toad in accordance with his peculiar system of medical philosophy, but his narrative coincides in almost every particular with the report from Rhode Island. From Flanders we may pass to England. There the duel between the Toad and the Spider received poetical treatment at the hands of Richard Lovelace, whose studies were not of a kind to acquaint him with Van Helmont's dissertation. The piece in question was first published in 1659, but was written some time before.2 It begins with all the pomp and circumstance of an epic. 1 Tumulus Pestis, or the Plague-Grave, chap. 17, in Physick Refined, translated by John Chandler, London, 1662, p. 1151. 2 Posthume Poems, 1659; see Lovelace's Poems, ed. Hazlitt, pp. 199 ff. Upon a day when the Dog-star Having their weapons in their eyes. After some skirmishing the Toad is bitten by the Spider: And wounded now, apace crawls on To his next plantane surgeon; With whose rich balm no sooner drest, That only rests awhile to pant, Then with repeated strength, and scars, Deals blows that thick themselves prevent, So the disdaining angry toad, That calls but a thin useless load His fatal feared self, comes back, With unknown venome fill'd to crack. Thus the combat is renewed. Bitten again, the Toad returns to seek his antidote. But his opponent has a divine ally, no less a personage than the goddess Pallas, whose interest in the struggle will not seem unnatural if we remember the myth of Arachne, charmingly told by Ovid in the sixth book of his Metamorphoses. The Lydian maiden Arachne, proud of her skill in weaving, had presumed to challenge Pallas herself to a match and had produced a web which even the goddess could not surpass. Pallas tore the fabric to pieces and smote her audacious rival on the forehead. Arachne hanged herself, but the goddess pitied her and forbade her dying. She transformed Arachne into a spider, and in that shape the |