According to a Bohemian legend, the mouse was originally a creation of the Devil, at the time when Noah entered the Ark, attended by the members of his family and followed by a numerous retinue of animals. The Devil, so runs the tale, hated the patriarch for his piety, and with evil intent created the mouse, whom he sent to gnaw a hole in the side of the Ark, through which the water might enter. But God then created the cat, who pursued and devoured the mouse, thus frustrating the design of the Evil One.[473] At the siege of Angers, the ancient capital of Anjou, in the year 845, during the reign of King Charles the Bald, the French were much annoyed by swarms of grasshoppers of unusual size. They were duly exorcised according to the custom of the times, and having been put to flight, are reported to have precipitated themselves into a river.[474] The French writer, St. Foix, in his “Essais historiques sur Paris,” has recorded that in the year 1120, the Bishop of Laon, in the Department of Aisne, pronounced an injunction against field-mice, on account of their ravages; and St. Bernard, a contemporary of that prelate, while preaching at Foigny in the same diocese, in order to relieve his congregation of the annoyance caused by a multitude of flies, repeated a formula of excommunication against them, whereat, according to monkish records, the flies fell dead in heaps and were gathered up with shovels. The early Anglo-Saxons not only made use of amulets of wood or other material, on which were engraven Runic characters, to secure protection from elves and demons,[475] but they carried about with them the herb called periwinkle, of the botanical genus _Vinca_, as a charm against snakes and wild animals.[476] IV. CHARMS AGAINST ANIMALS As illustrative of the superstitious use of charms and exorcisms against animals and reptiles in different epochs and countries, we have examples from many and varied sources. The Egyptians used, as charms against venomous serpents, various magic formulæ inscribed upon strips of papyrus, which were rolled up and worn as talismans. A specimen of such an one is to be seen among the Egyptian manuscripts in the Louvre collection. The following is a translation of a portion of one of these incantations, which invokes the aid of a god to protect the bearer against wild animals and reptiles:— Come to me, O Lord of Gods, drive far from me the lions coming from the earth, the crocodiles issuing from the river, the mouth of all biting reptiles coming out of their holes.[477] Pliny recommended a particular herb as an amulet against serpents and vipers. This herb, to which he gives no less than five Latin names, appears to be identical with the _Anchusa officinalis_ of modern pharmacopœias, the bugloss or ox-tongue of southern Europe, a plant now seldom used in therapeutics.