never recovered her mental balance,—always appearing to be in a state of pitiable apprehension.
Animals so delicately organized are necessarily sensitive to atmospheric conditions. An approaching storm starts them restlessly wandering from room to room. They have been known to exhibit signs of acute disquietude before cyclones and earthquakes. In 1783 two wise cats of Messina behaved so strangely, and showed such evidences of terror, that their master, infected by their fear, fled from his house in time to escape the first great shock, and the tumbling of his walls in ruins.
It is pleasant to relate these services to man on the part of little beasts who do not often pose as our benefactors, and who have been, in their day, accused of much ill-doing. Even now, when suspicions of witchcraft are allayed, and mothers no longer believe that cats suck the blood of their sleeping infants, the ancient and unconquerable prejudice is kept alive by sad stories of contagion,—of pussies who carry diphtheria and scarlet fever from house to house, with a malignity worthy of the Jew of Malta.
"As for myself, I walk abroad a-nights,
And kill sick people groaning under walls;
Sometimes I go about and poison wells."
Every year or so an enterprising newspaper reporter stirs up a sleepy bacteriologist, and per-
