Lepus quoque occurrens in via, infortunatum iter præsagit et ominosum.--Alexander ab Alexandro, _Genialium Dierum, libri VI._ v. 13 p. 685. Nor did we meet, with nimble feet, One little fearful _lepus_, That certain sign, as some divine, Of fortune bad to keep us. Ellison, _Trip to Benwell_, lx. HOOPOE (_The_). The country people of Sweden consider the appearance of the hoopoe as a presage of war.--Pennant, _Zoölogy_, i. 258. LIZARDS warn men of the approach of a serpent. LOOKING-GLASSES. If a looking-glass is broken, it is a warning that some one in the house will ere long lose a friend. Grose says it “betokens a mortality in the family, commonly the master.” To break a looking-glass is prophetic that the person will never get married; or, if married, will lose the person wedded. MAGPIES are prophetic birds. A common Lincolnshire proverb is, “One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, four for death;” or thus: “One for sorrow, two for mirth, three a wedding, four a birth.” Augurs and understood relations have, By magotpies and choughs and rooks, brought forth The secret’st man of blood. Shakespeare, _Macbeth_ (1606). Alexander Ross tells us that the battle between the British and French, in which the former were overthrown in the reign of Charles VIII., was foretold by a skirmish between magpies and jackdaws.--_Arcana Microcosmi._ MANTLE (_The Test_). A boy brought to King Arthur’s court a mantle which no one could wear who was unfaithful in love, false in domestic life, or traitorous to the king. If any such attempted to put it on, it puckered up, or hung slouchingly, or tumbled to pieces.--Percy, _Reliques_ (“The Boy and the Mantle”). METEORS. Falling stars, eclipses, comets, and other signs in the heavens, portend the death or fall of princes. Meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven; The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth ... These signs forerun the death or fall of kings. Shakespeare, _Richard II._, act ii. sc. 4 (1597). Consult _Matt._ xxiv. 29; _Luke_ xxi. 25. MICE AND RATS. If a rat or mouse, during the night, gnaw our clothes, it is indicative of some impending evil, perhaps even death.