feet but six when he stood on his head, because an inverted 9 makes a 6; he was certainly reasoning by a far-fetched analogy, however little faith he may have had in the correctness of his reasoning. The children who believed that butter comes from butterflies, and grass from grasshoppers, beans from bees, and kittens from pussy-willows (Stanley Hall), may have been simply misled by sound analogies; but when Sir John Lubbock tells us of a little girl saying to her brother, "If you eat so much goose you will be quite silly," and adds that, "there are perhaps few children to whom the induction would not seem perfectly legitimate," we appreciate that such arguments, so closely paralleling the superstitions of savages, may be more real to children than we suspect. VI We may now enter in the search for reasonings by analogy into a field of greatest interest to the student of the history of culture; namely, the household traditions, the superstitions, and the pseudo-scientific systems, that originated among our ancestors, remote or immediate, and are still far from obsolete in all but the upper strata of our civilization. This portion of the theme indeed presents an _embarras de richesses_, and the illustrations to be cited form but an insignificant share of those that could readily be collected. Certainly more than one chapter of the history of human error could be profitably devoted to those due to an unwarranted use of the argument by analogy. We may begin by taking a flying excursion into that body of superstitions and folk-lore customs which no nation, however high or low in the scale of civilization, is without. The widespread custom of carrying baby upstairs before being taken to the lower floors of the house, so that he may be successful in life and participate in its ups rather than its downs, rests upon baby-logic indeed. The belief that if baby keeps his fists tightly closed he will be stingy, but if he holds an open palm he will be generous, likewise requires no interpretation. It is forbidden, too, to measure a child, for measuring it is measuring it for its coffin. To the German peasant, if a dog howls looking downward it means death, if upward recovery from sickness. "The Hessian lad thinks that he may escape the conscription by carrying a baby-girl's cap in his pocket--a symbolic way of repudiating manhood." "Fish," says the Cornishman, "should be eaten from the tail to the head, to bring other fishes' heads towards the shore, for eating them the wrong way turns them from the coast." "It is still plain," says Mr. Tylor, from whom I have cited some of these examples, "why the omen of the crow should be different on the right or left hand, why a vulture should mean rapacity; a stork, concord; a pelican, piety; an ass, labor; why the fierce, conquering wolf should be a good omen, and the timid hare a bad one; why bees, types of an obedient nation, should be lucky to a king, while flies