countless swarm of flies, which annoyed the worshippers and officiating priests in the abbey church of Foigny, and lo, on the morrow they were, like Sennacherib’s host, “all dead corpses.” William, Abbot of St. Theodore in Rheims, who records this miraculous event, states that as soon as the execration was uttered, the flies fell to the floor in such quantities that they had to be thrown out with shovels (_palis ejicientes_). This incident, he adds, was so well known that the cursing of the flies of Foigny became proverbial and formed the subject of a parable. [_Vita S. Bernardi_, auctore Wilhelmo abbate S. Thod. Rhem. I. 11.] According to the usual account, the malediction was not so drastic in its operation and did not cause the flies to disappear until the next day. The rationalist, whose chill and blighting breath is ever nipping the tender buds of faith, would doubtless suggest that a sharp and sudden frost may have added to the force and efficacy of the excommunication. The saint resorted to this severe and summary measure, says the monkish chronicler, because the case was urgent and “no other remedy was at hand.” Perhaps this lack of other means of relief may refer to the absence of “deacons with fly-flaps,” who, according to a contemporary writer, were appointed “to drive away the flies when the Pope celebrateth.” The island Reichenau in Lake Constance, which derives its name from its fertility and is especially famous for the products of its vineyards and its orchards, was once so infested by venomous reptiles as to be uninhabitable by human beings. Early in the eighth century, as the legend goes, it was visited by St. Pirminius, and no sooner had he set foot upon it than these creatures all crawled and wriggled into the water, so that the surface of the lake was covered for three days and three nights with serpents, scorpions and hideous worms. Peculiar vermifugal efficacy was ascribed to the crosier of St. Magnus, the apostle of Algau, which was preserved in the cloister of St. Mang at Füssen in Bavaria, and from 1685 to 1770 was repeatedly borne in solemn procession to Lucerne, Zug, Schwyz and other portions of Switzerland for the expulsion and extermination of rats, mice, cockchafers and other insects. Sometimes formulas of malediction were procured directly from the pope, which, like saints’ curses, could be applied without legal formalities. Thus in 1660 the inhabitants of Lucerne paid four pistoles and one Roman thaler for a document of this kind; on Nov. 15, 1731, the municipal council of Thonou in Savoy resolved to join with other parishes of that province to obtain from Rome an excommunication against insects, the expenses for which are to be assessed _pro rata_;[2] in 1740 the commune of Piuro purchased from His Holiness a similar anathema; in the same year the common council of Chiavenna discussed the propriety of applying to Rome for an execratory against beetles and bears; and in December 1752 it was proposed by the