hat swans are always hatched during a thunderstorm. I was told this by
an old man in Hampshire, who had been connected with the care of swans
all his life. He, however, knew nothing about their singing at death.

Is this opinion as to the birth of swans common? If so, probably some of
your numerous correspondents will detail the form in which such belief
is expressed.

ROBERT RAWLINSON.

_Snakes_ (Vol. ii., p. 164.).--Several years ago, in returning from an
excursion from Clevedon, in Somerset, to Cadbury Camp, I saw a viper on
the down, which I pointed out to the old woman in charge of the donkeys,
who assailed it with a stout stick, and nearly killed it. I expressed
surprise at her leaving it with some remains of life; but she said that,
whatever she did to it, it would "live till sun-down, and as soon as the
sun was set it would die." The same superstition prevails in Cornwall,
and also in Devon.

H.G.T.

_Pixies or Piskies._--At Chudleigh Rocks I was told, a few weeks ago, by
the old man who acts as guide to the caves, of a recent instance of a
man's being pixy-led. In going home, full of strong drink, across the
hill above the cavern called the "Pixies' Hole," on a moonlit night, he
heard sweet {511} music, and was led into the whirling dance by the
"good folk," who kept on spinning him without mercy, till he fell down
"in a swoon."

On "coming to himself," he got up and found his way home, where he "took
to his bed, and never left it again, but died a little while after," the
victim (I suppose) of _delirium tremens_, or some such disorder, the
incipient symptoms of which his haunted fancy turned into the sweet
music in the night wind and the fairy revel on the heath. In the tale I
have above given he persisted (said the old man), when the medical
attendant who was called in inquired of him the symptoms of his illness.
This occurrence happened, I understood, very recently, and was told to
me in perfect good faith.

I have just been told of a man who several years ago lost his way on
Whitchurch Down, near Tavistock. The farther he went the farther he had
to go; but happily calling to mind the antidote "in such case made and
provided," he turned his coat inside out, after which he had no
difficulty in finding his way. "He was supposed," adds my informant, "to
be pisky-led."

About ten miles from Launceston, on the Bodmin road (or at least in that
direction) is a large piece of water called Dosmere (pron