human
Athenian Oracle the following curious rejoinder appears to the query:--
gpt
Why rats, toads, ravens, screech owls, are ominous; and how they came to foreknow fatal events? The writer replies:
human
Had the querist said unlucky instead of ominous he might easily have met with satisfaction; a rat is so because it destroys many a Cheshire cheese, &c. A toad is unlucky because it poisons. [This is now known to be erroneous.]
gpt
As for ravens and screech owls, they are just as unlucky as cats, when about their courtship, because they make an ugly noise, which disturbes their neighbourhood. The instinct of rats leaving an old ship is because they cannot be dry in it, and an old house because, perhaps, they want victuals. A raven is much such a prophet as our conjurors or almanac makers, foretelling events after they are come to pass: they follow great armies, as vultures, not as foreboding battle, but for the dead men, dogs, horses, &c., which, especially in a march, must be daily left behind them. But the foolish observations made on their croaking before death, etc., are for the most part pure humour, and have no grounds besides foolish tradition or a sickly imagination. Old Reginald Scot, as early as the sixteenth century, stoutly contended
human
A Sailor's Notion about Rats, in which the following passage occurs:--
gpt
It is a well authenticated fact that rats have often been known to leave ships in the harbour previous to their being lost at sea. Some of those wiseacres who want to convince us _against the evidence of our senses_ will call this superstition. As neither I have time, nor you space, to cavil with such at present, I shall leave them alone in their glory. It is difficult to decide whether the superstition, the bad logic, or the self-sufficiency of the writer of this sentence most predominates. It is a pity he did not edify the
human
as to how
gpt
could by any possibility bring us in contact with the motive of rats, with whom we have had no intercourse either of a mental or moral kind. But perhaps the said
human
Shipmaster has, after taking rats into his council, rejected their advice, and lost his bark in consequence. Truly it is a difficult matter to determine where abject superstition ends and ordinary credulity begins. The fact that rats do sometimes migrate from one ship to another, or from one barn or corn stack to another, from various causes, ought to be quite sufficient to explain such
gpt
as informs us that
human
If they left the ship at all _in harbour_, it, of necessity must have been _before_ the vessel was lost at sea. The error lies in the assertion, without the slightest