In a few cases Pliny objects to the animals or parts of animals employed by the _magi_, as in the passage already cited where he complains that they admire moles more than any other animals.[226] But his assertion is inconsistent, since he has already affirmed that they hold the hyena in most admiration of all animals on the ground that it works magic upon men.[227] Their promise of readier favor with peoples and kings to those who anoint themselves with lion’s fat, especially that between the eyebrows, he criticizes by declaring that no fat can be found there.[228] He also twits the _magi_ for magnifying the importance of so nasty a creature as the tick.[229] They are attracted to it by the fact that it has no outlet to its body and can live only seven days even if it fasts. Whether there is any astrological significance in the number seven here Pliny does not say. He does inform us, however, that the cricket is employed in magic because it moves backward.[230] A very bizarre object employed by the Druids and other magicians is a sort of egg produced by the hissing or foam of snakes.[231] The blood of the basilisk may also be classed as a rarity. Apparently animals in some way unusual are preferred in magic, like a black sheep,[232] but the logic in the reasons given by Pliny for their selection is not clear in every instance. In some other cases not criticized by Pliny[233] we have plainly enough sympathetic magic or the principle of like cures like, as when the milt of a calf or sheep is used to cure diseases of the human spleen. [Sidenote: Further instances.] The magicians, however, do not scorn to use familiar and easily obtainable animals like the goat and dog and cat. The liver and dung of a cat, a puppy’s brains, the blood and genitals of a dog, and the gall of a black male dog are among the animal substances employed.[234] Such substances as those just named are equally in demand from other animals.[235] Minute parts of animals are frequently employed by the magicians, such as the toe of an owl, the liver of a mouse given in a fig, the tooth of a live mole, the stones from young swallows’ gizzards, the eyes of river crabs.[236] Sometimes the part employed is reduced to ashes, perhaps a relic of sacrificial custom. Thus for toothache the _magi_ inject into the ear nearer the tooth the ashes of the head of a mad dog and oil of Cyprus, while they prescribe for affections of the sinews the ashes of an owl’s head in honied wine with lily root.[237] Other living creatures which Pliny mentions as used by the _magi_ are the salamander, earthworm, bat, scarab with reflex horns, lizard, tortoise, bed-bug, frog, and sea-urchin.[238] The dragon’s tail wrapped in a gazelle’s skin and bound on with deer-sinews cures epilepsy,[239] and a mixture of the dragon’s tongue, eyes, gall, and intestines, boiled in oil, cooled in the night air, and rubbed on morning and evening, frees one from nocturnal apparitions.[240]