1468. If a ship has a starboard list, it is a sign of a quick passage; if a port list, it is a sign of a long passage. _Conception Bay and New Harbor, N.F._ 1469. Write the date of the first snowstorm, and you'll gain a bet before the winter is through. _Massachusetts._ 1470. To ascertain a girl's age, pull a hair from her head, hang a finger-ring from this inside a tumbler or goblet, and it will strike the number of years. _Boston, Mass._ 1471. Throw a strand of your hair in the fire; if it blazes you will live long and happily; if not, you will die soon. _Alabama._ 1472. If a tree falls to the right while you are looking at it, you are going on a long trip before the end of the year, and will have some unexpected piece of good luck. _Alabama._ 1473. A person born on Halloween is said to be possessed of evil spirits. _Alabama._ 1474. Place a broom across the door, and if any of your departed friends wish to speak to you they are free to come and go at will while the broom remains there. _Alabama._ 1475. If a person who raises fowls is bothered with hawks, he may prevent the trouble by throwing a handful of "rocks" into the fire while it is burning brightly. _Alabama._ NOTES. NOTES. Introduction, page 8.--S.G. Drake, _Annals of Witchcraft in New England_, Boston, 1869, p. 189, remarks that the principal accusers and witnesses in the witchcraft prosecutions of 1692, in Salem, Mass., were eight girls from eleven to twenty years of age, and adds with reference to their conduct previous to the accusations: "These Females instituted frequent Meetings, or got up, as it would now be styled, a Club, which was called a Circle. How frequent they had these Meetings is not stated, but it was soon ascertained that they met to 'try projects,' or to do or produce superhuman Acts. They doubtless had among them some book or books on Magic, and Stories of Witchcraft, which one or more of their Circle professed to understand, and pretended to teach the Rest." An examination of the evidence in the trials, however, shows not only no authority for these assertions, but that no such meetings took place previous to the trials, nor did any such "circle" exist. Drake derived his information from a paper by S.P. Fowler, who, in an address before the Essex Institute, in the year 1856, had remarked: "These girls, together with Abigail Williams, a niece of Mr. Parris, aged eleven years, were in the habit of meeting in a circle in the village, to practise palmistry, fortune-telling, &c." For such representation Mr. Fowler had no warrant; it would seem that he had obtained the notion by transferring to the time of the trials his experience in connection with spiritualistic "circles" of his own day. It is curious to observe how readily this suggestion was adopted, and with what uniformity recent popular narratives of the