To avoid this men who work in the mines have found that a snake will not go near this oktea, and they have built closely knit fences around their tents, with little gates to go in and out, and beyond this the rattler will not penetrate. It was first the Indians of the desert who discovered this deadly shrub, and they got the secret from birds and animals, which, to protect their young, travel sometimes many miles back and forth, bringing the thorns with which to cover their little nests. Gophers and other small animals there cover their nests in this manner.—Los Angeles Times
(1090)
FERTILITY
These lines are by Edward Rowland Sill:
Clear water on smooth rock
Could give no foothold for a single flower,
Or slenderest shaft of grain:
The stone must crumble under storm and rain,
The forests crash beneath the whirlwind's power,
And broken boughs from any a tempest-*shock,
And fallen leaves from many a wintry hour,
Must mingle in the mold,
Before the harvest whitens on the plain,
Bearing a hundredfold.
Patience, O weary heart!
Let all thy sparkling hours depart,
And all thy hopes be withered with the frost,
And every effort tempest-tossed—
So when all life's green leaves
Are fallen, and moldered underneath the sod,
Thou shalt not go too lightly to thy God,
But heavy with full sheaves. (Text.)
(1091)
FETISHISM
Miss F. M. Dennis writes from Ebu Owerri, a place about seventy miles southeast of Onitsha, North Africa:
It is a custom in this Ibo country when a
child is born for the parents to go into the
bush, cut a stick from a tree and plant it.
When the child is old enough to walk and
know anything it worships this young tree.
All the Ibo people have them. But until the
child comes to man's estate and has a household,
this is the only idol he has.
(1092)
The negroes of the Gold and Slave
Coasts, like every other people low in the
stage of civilization, believe that inanimate,
as well as animate, objects have souls or
ghosts, a belief which is proved by the practise
of burying arms, implements, utensils,
etc., for the use of the dead in Dead-land,
and there continues the former pursuit of the
man, using the souls or ghosts of the weapons
buried with him; but the negroes have gone
beyond this, and just as they believe man to
possess a third element, or indwelling spirit,
so do they believe that every natural object,
everything not made by human hands, has, in
addition to its soul or ghost, a third element
of spiritual individuality. They hold that just
as, when the man dies, the kra of the man
enters a new-born child, and the soul, or
ghost-man, goes to Dead-land; so, when the
tree dies, the kra, so to speak, of the tree
enters a seedling, and the ghost-tree goes
to join the ranks of the shadowy forest in
Dead-land. And it is these animating or
spiritual tenants of natural objects and natural
features that the negro fears and consequently
worships.—A. B. Ellis, The Popular Science Monthly.
(1093)
Fetters Worn for Others—See Hardship Vicariously Borne.
Fickleness in Work—See Attainment Superficial.
FIDELITY AMONG ANIMALS
Instances of almost human fidelity are
common among deer. We have several
times been witness of them. On one occasion
we had wounded a good stag late in
the evening; the herd broke away, leaving
him alone. In a few minutes another fine
stag, evidently his friend, detached himself
from the herd and galloped back to where
the first lay wounded in a burn (brook). It
got so dark that we could only tell the where-*abouts
of the wounded beast by seeing the
other standing by his side. We crawled up
to about a hundred yards of him, but still
could not see the one we had shot. We
stood up, expecting he would jump up and
make a run for it, but he was too badly hit.
Walking on, we at last saw his gray head
in the heather, and a bullet finished him. Still
the devoted friend kept close by and would
not leave the spot. We had not the heart
to shoot the poor beast after he had given
proof of such wonderful fidelity, and at last
