Some Catholics, in consequence of the _John Doree_ having a dark spot, like a finger-mark, on each side of the head, believe this to have been the fish, and not the _Haddock_, from which the Apostle Peter took the tribute-money, by order of our Saviour. The modern Greeks denominate it "the fish of St. Christopher," from a legend which relates that it was trodden on by that saint, when he bore his divine burden across an arm of the sea. Some species of _Echini_, fossilized, and seen frequently in Norfolk, are termed by the ignorant peasantry, and considered, _Fairy Loaves_, to take which, when found, is highly unlucky. The _Amphisbaena_, from its faculty of moving backwards or forwards at pleasure, has been thought to have a head at either extremity of its reptile body, but close inspection proves this opinion false. The fascinating power of the _Rattlesnake_, of which so many stories have in times past been related, and which was asserted to exist in its glittering eyes, has been of late years resolved into that extreme nervous terror of its victim (at sight of so certain a foe) which deprives it of the power of motion, and causes it to fall, an unresisting prey, into the reptile's jaws. We may here pause to observe, _en passant_, that the antipathy which people of all ages and nations have felt against every reptile of the serpent tribe, from the harmless worm to the hosts of deadly "dragons" which infest the torrid zone, and the popular opinion that all are venomous, often in spite of experience, seems to be not so much superstition, as a terror of the species, implanted, since the fall, in our bosoms, by the same Divine Being who at that period pronounced the serpent to be the most accursed beast of the field. (_To be continued_.) * * * * * SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS. TAIT'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. Nothing if not political appears to be the order of the new magazine and other literary enterprises of the present day. Is this good policy in itself? it may be so from the vivifying aid it lends to the springs of imaginative writing. We have therefore no right to complain of the _leaven_ of Mr. Tait's Magazine: it is anything but dull: _e.g._ the life and jauntiness of the following paper is very pleasant, shrewd, and clever: _The Martinet_.