FABLE AND FOLKLORE 95 



sented with a bit of rock in its fist, the pose signifying 

 "vigilance." 



Lyly, 49 in that queer old book Euphucs, confesses: 

 "What I have done was only to keep myselfe from sleepe, 

 as the Crane doth the Stone in her foote; and I would 

 also, with the same Crane, that I had been silent, holding 

 a Stone in my mouth." His 16th-century readers under- 

 stood this second simile, for they remembered that cranes 

 were said to be thus gagged when migrating, so as not 

 to utter any cries that would bring eagles or other birds of 

 prey to attack them. 



This, perhaps, will be the most appropriate place to 

 mention some other quaint but widely credited stories of 

 birds possessed of stones, although they are not usually 

 connected with migratory habits. 



The people of Rome in the old days were told of a 

 crystalline stone called alec tonus, as large as a bean, to 

 be found in the gizzard of the barnyard cock. It was 

 held to have wonderful properties, endowing its possessor 

 with strength, courage, and success with women and 

 money, and to this apparently complete list of virtues is 

 added by one historian the quality of invisibility. This 

 last virtue also pertained to the stone placed by the raven 

 in the throat of its fledging, but the formalities described 

 as necessary for anyone who sought to obtain it were 

 quite impossible to fulfil. "It may, indeed," as Hulme 38 

 remarks, "have had the same effect on the original owner* 

 as there could scarcely be an authentic instance of such 

 peculiar property being found." On the other hand we 

 are told that a stone from the hoopoe, when laid upon the 

 breast of a sleeping man, forced him to reveal any 

 rogueries he might have committed. 



It is stated in Cassell's Natural History (Vol. IV), 



