676 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



allow themselves to be influenced, unconsciously perhaps, by the 

 Neapolitan superstition. " It can do no harm, and may do some 

 good," they might be tempted to reply to you, as some gamblers do 

 when you jest with them concerning their fetiches. This kind of 

 reasoning is quite general among polytheistic populations, where 

 every one thinks it good to do homage to other peoples' gods, and 

 to unknown gods as well as his own ; for who knows which one 

 he may not need in this world or the next ? Egyptian scarabs are 

 found by the thousand, from Mesopotamia to Sardinia, wherever 

 the armies of the Pharaohs or Phoenician ships have gone. Every- 

 where, also, in these regions, native scarabs have been collected, 

 made in imitation of those of Egypt, and reproducing with greater 

 or less exactness the symbols which the engravers of the valley 

 of the Nile lavished upon the faces of their amulets. So also, long 

 before the diffusion of coins, pottery, and jewels, the figurines of 

 Greece and Etruria furnished all central and western Europe with 

 divine types and symbolical images. 



Are there any indications that permit us to distinguish wheth- 

 er like symbols have been engendered separately or are derived 

 from the same source ? The complexity and oddness of the forms, 

 when they exceed certain limits, go to sustain the second of these 

 hypotheses. The double-headed eagle of the old German Empire 

 has now passed into the arms of Austria and Russia. The English- 

 men Barthe and Hamilton were surprised when, traveling in Asia 

 Minor some fifty years ago, they discovered a two-headed eagle 

 of the same pattern engraved among religious scenes in the bas- 

 reliefs of Pteria, which went back to the ancient Hittites. It is 

 hard to suppose that a representation identical in features, so con- 

 trary to the laws of nature, was spontaneously imagined in both 

 instances. M. Longperier furnished a solution to the riddle when 

 he pointed out that the two-headed eagle did not replace the one- 

 headed eagle on the arms of the empire till after the expedition 

 of Frederick II to the East ; that it figured at the beginning of 

 the thirteenth century on the coins and banners of the Turkoman 

 princes, then masters of Asia Minor. The latter adopted it as the 

 symbol of all power, perhaps to figure the hamca, the fabulous 

 bird of the Mussulman traditions, which carries off buffaloes and 

 elephants as the kite carries off mice. Thus the Turkish race, 

 M. Perrot observes, saw the entrance to the West closed at Le- 

 panto and Belgrade by the eagle which had led it triumphantly 

 on the banks of the Euphrates, and the image of which it also 

 had borrowed from the sculptures cut by its predecessors on the 

 rocks of Eniuk and Jasilikaia. 



If sufficient indications can not be drawn from the form, iden- 

 tity of signification and use may give strong presumptions respect- 

 ing the affiliation of symbols. It is not surprising that the Hindoos 



