Cigars are much in evidence at the birth of a first child, and also thereafter at the birth of a son. A child born with a caul is believed by many to have the gift of second sight, and it is also sometimes thought that the caul is a powerful fire-fighting weapon. Superstitions attach to many other phases of life, as well as to births. Most of these beliefs are not peculiar to North Dakota, but are rather a part of the folklore of the Nation. A dropped spoon means company is coming, and so does the cat's washing its face. Snakes do not die before sundown. A horse-hair put in water will turn into a snake. The number of stars in the ring around the moon show the number of days before a coming storm. Plants which bear underground should be planted in the dark of the moon, and those which bear above ground in the light of the moon. A window shade rolling up when no one is near it portends a death in the family. Many of the myriad superstitions are not believed, but nevertheless continue to be passed on. There is some belief in ghosts and occult powers, and scarcely any community is without the story of a strange death and a haunted house--such as the tale of the doctor who was mysteriously killed on a farm near Wilton and whose ghostly galloping team disturbed the farmer so much that he was forced to move. These stories, however, are often not credited but merely passed on for effect. As for fortune tellers, the most popular prophets are those who deal, not with tall dark men and long trips, but with isobars and isotherms, for the interests of agricultural North Dakotans are inseparable from the weather, which governs their destinies far more surely than any other factor in their lives. SCHOOLS, CHURCHES, AND SOCIAL CURRENTS For many years education and religion in North Dakota were closely associated, for the earliest schools were organized by priests. The Scottish Highlanders of North Dakota's first white settlement--the Selkirk colony at Pembina--were a highly religious peasant people who keenly felt the absence of churches and schools in the land to which they had migrated. Their sponsor, Lord Selkirk, also felt that a church would add to the harmony and stability of the community, and offered to contribute 25 acres for a church and 20 square miles for a school and mission if the Bishop of Quebec would approve a church at Pembina. The bishop acceded, and in 1818 Father Joseph Dumoulin, Father Joseph Provencher, and William Edge, a catechist, arrived to establish churches and schools, and study the "savage languages" in order to "reduce those languages to regular principles so as to be able to publish a grammar after some years of residence." EDUCATION