believed to be, in many respects, superior even to that of the cow. The
goat was much venerated by the ancient Egyptians, and never sacrificed,
because Pan was represented with the legs and feet of that animal, but the
Greeks destroyed it on account of its cropping the vines.

Few animals have been the cause, perhaps, of so many superstitions as the
common domestic _Cat_; most of them are too well known here to require
repetition, but the still prevalent, popular prejudice that this creature
sucks the breath of sleepers, especially children, and thereby kills them,
has been signally refuted by modern naturalists, who observe, that even if
it were capable of drawing a person's breath thus, the construction of its
mouth renders it impossible to impede the respiration of the slumberer
through mouth and nostrils at the same time; this vulgar superstition
probably arose from cats liking to lie warm, and nestling consequently in
beds, cribs, and cradles. To dream of cats is considered unlucky, denoting
treachery and quarrels on the part of friends. Cats, from no apparent
cause, seeming shy, agitated, and traversing the house uttering cries, as
if alarmed, is believed to forbode sudden and causeless strife between the
members of the families with whom they reside. That the breath of these
animals is poisonous, that they can play with serpents and remain
uninjured, whilst their fur communicates the infection of the venom of
those reptiles, that they lend themselves readily to infernal agents and
purposes, that certain portions of their bodies possess magical properties
and were efficacious in the preparation of charmed potions, and that they
are partly supernatural creatures, endowed with a power of bringing good
or evil fortune upon their possessors, with other facts just as credible,
was once devoutly believed by the illiterate, as it is partially at this
very day.[1]

_Dogs_ are generally supposed to possess the faculty of beholding spirits