i74 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Scotland comes also the custom of passing young chicks through the 

 orbits of a horse's skull to keep the hawks from catching them. The 

 perforated monoliths of Great Britain and northern Europe are known 

 generally as ' Odin Stones,' probably because, according to the Norse 

 mythology, Odin in the shape of a worm bored his head through a 

 stone to get at the 'mead of poetry'; and babies have been drawn 

 through them from ancient times to cure them of various ailments. 

 These monoliths, as well as the small perforated ' Odin ' stones still 

 used as amulets in the same countries, are closely related to the sala- 

 grama, or holy stone, common, curiously enough, to Italy and India. 

 In Italy the salagrama is a stalagmite which is believed, on account 

 of its resemblance to the mounds thrown up by earthworms, to be such 

 a mound petrified. The people carry it in a bag with some magical 

 herbs, and repeat over it an incantation which recites that its cavities 

 and irregularities are potent to bewilder the evil eye. The Indian 

 salagrama is a kind of ammonite about as large as an orange and having 

 a hole through it. A legend relates that Vishnu, the Preserver, when 

 pursued by the Destroyer, was changed by Maya into the stone, through 

 which as a worm the Destroyer bored his way. It is believed that the 

 evil eye is blunted by the perforation and by the irregularities of the 

 stone's surface. 



The survival in the midst of a high civilization of these Carolina 

 practises, allied as they are to practises and beliefs of almost primitive 

 times, affords a pertinent illustration of the manner in which magical 

 arts cling to life. We have seen how heathen charms and incantations 

 not only failed to disappear before the coming of Christianity, but even 

 gained a new lease of life by hastening to enlist themselves under its 

 banner. It is the same way with superstitions in general. Adapting 

 themselves from age to age to the changed conditions which surround 

 them, here receding and there advancing, dying out only to reappear 

 under changed and scarcely recognizable forms, they yield almost im- 

 perceptibly to the advance of sound learning and common sense. Their 

 retreat, however, has been more rapid since science has begun to shed 

 her rays into the dark places where such things hide themselves; and 

 in proportion as this great light becomes more generally diffused magic 

 in medicine, as in all other departments of human thought, will fade 

 and finally disappear. 



