[l5] Providence
could never suffer beef to be eaten so near her sacred majesty
without visiting the crops with blight, hail, or some other calamity,
and the people with cholera morbus, small-pox, and other great
pestilences. As for himself, he should never be persuaded that all
these afflictions did not arise wholly and solely from this dreadful
habit of eating beef. I declare', concluded he, 'that if the
Government would but consent to prohibit the eating of beef, it might
levy from the lands three times the revenue that they now pay.'
The great festival of the Holi, the Saturnalia of India, terminates
on the last day of Phalgun, or 16th of March.[16] On that day the
Holi is burned; and on that day the ravages of the monster (for
monster they will have it to be) are supposed to cease. Any field
that has remained untouched up to that time is considered to be quite
secure from the moment the Holi has been committed to the flames.
What gave rise to the notion I have never been able to discover, but
such is the general belief. I suppose the siliceous epidermis must
then have become too hard, and the pores in the stem too much closed
up to admit of the further depredation of the fungi.
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