speed of the hare can be somehow bestowed on the man who wears its skin, and this notion of transfer crops up repeatedly in these old recipes. Our next extract points to a time of some little peril, and gives welcome means of avoiding the evils that might befall the traveller. “Gather, on the morrow of All Saints, a strong branch of willow, of which you will make a staff, fashioned to your liking. Hollow it out, by removing the pith from within, after having furnished the lower end with an iron ferrule. Put into the bottom of the staff the two eyes of a young wolf, the tongue and heart of a dog, three green lizards, and the hearts of two young swallows. These must all be dried in the sun between two papers, having been first sprinkled with finely ground saltpetre. Besides all these, put into the staff seven leaves of vervain, gathered on the eve of St. John the Baptist, with a stone of divers colours, which you will find in the nest of the lapwing, and stop the end of the staff with a panel of box, or of any other material you please, and be assured that this staff will preserve you from the perils which befall the traveller, either from robbers, wild beasts, mad dogs, or venomous animals. It will also procure you the goodwill of those with whom you lodge.” The dread of mad dogs, of scorpions and other venomous creatures seems to have been extreme in the Middle Ages, every medical book and herbal abounding in preservatives from, and antidotes for, such perils to the traveller. It will be noted in these and such like receipts that no little amount of trouble was necessarily entailed in providing the necessary ingredients, and in providing them at the special season that increased their efficacy. The necessary items in the foregoing receipt, a calendar to tell when the Saints’ days come round, a willow stick, a wolf, two swallows, and a dog to be slain, lizards to be captured, paper, saltpetre, iron ferrule and plug of box to be procured, vervain leaves to be gathered, and lapwing’s nest to be found and ransacked, are really few in number and easy of attainment compared to those required in many preparations. In the famous vermifuge and antidote to all animal poisons that was known as “Venice treacle,” there were seventy-three ingredients. This was retained in the London Pharmacopeia up to little more than a century ago. The fourteenth-century equivalent of the well-known legend of the nineteenth-century chemist, “prescriptions carefully prepared,” must have carried with it a tremendous responsibility in mediæval days.