zo6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



yield thousands of them, while they are very rare at the fishing 

 station of Dimeh. That the use of sickles tipped with flint very 

 probably lasted long after the introduction of metals seems to be 

 proved by the hieroglyphics; but very few evidences of the existence 

 of such tools are found after the middle empire. 



ISTo traces of articles related to the religion of the Pharaohs are 

 found in the burial places of the aborigines. In place of the statu- 

 ettes and funerary divinities of later times are found rude figurines 

 of animals cut in green schists. They represent fishes, tortoises with 

 eyes adorned with hard stone or nacre, and numerous signs the origin 

 of which is unknown, and were apparently regarded as fetiches or 

 divinities. Articles of pottery are very numerous, very crude, and of 

 a great variety of forms. It is not necessary to suppose that the peo- 

 ple who have left these relics were savages or barbarians. History 

 and even the present age afford instances of many peoples who have 

 obtained considerable degrees of civilization while backward in some 

 of the arts. It is hardly possible to achieve delicacy of design and 

 finish without the use of metals. I believe I have shown that an 

 age of stone once existed in Egypt, and that it furthermore played 

 an important part, even in Pharaonic civilization. — Translated for 

 the Popular Science Monthly from the Author's Recherches sur les 

 Origines cle VEgypte. 



I 



SUPEKSTITION AND CHIME. 



By Prof. E. P. EVANS. 



1ST January, 1898, an elderly woman came in great anxiety to a 

 priest of the Church of St. Ursula, in Munich, Bavaria, and 

 complained that the devil haunted her house at night and frightened 

 her by making a great noise. In explanation of this unseasonable 

 and undesirable visit from the lower world she stated that a joint- 

 stock company had been formed in Berlin, with a branch in Munich, 

 for the purpose of discovering hidden treasures, and that in order to 

 attain this object a human sacrifice must be made to the devil, and 

 that she had been selected as the victim. A woman, whose husband 

 was a stockholder in the aforesaid company, had kindly communi- 

 cated to her this information, so that she might be prepared and have 

 time to set her house in order. Satan, however, grew impatient of 

 the promised sacrifice, and began to look after her. The priest sent 

 one of his younger assistants at the altar to read appropriate prayers 

 in the haunted house, and thus exorcise the evil spirit. We can 

 hardly suppose that his reverence believed in the reality of the re- 

 ported apparition, and yet he could not assert its impossibility by 



