ASSYRIAN MONUMENTS. i8r 



of horns to obtain luck, A superstition of this sort, 

 once started, would in those days have become con- 

 tagious, and would have spread like wildfire. In such 

 cases the failures are overlooked and forgotten, but 

 the successes are rivetted on the mind. 



The power of horns once established, they became 

 a sort of ' fetish,' and are so in many places to this 

 day. This 'fetish' did not become extinct by further 

 civilization, but only modified in various ways ; and 

 these transformations have become one of the interest- 

 ing studies of archaeology and anthropology. 



Count d'Alviella, at p. 13, says: "I want to speak 

 of the attraction which equivalent symbols exercise, 

 the one over the other, or better, the tendency which 

 they seem to have of being fused into intermediate 

 types." 



It may be now of some profit to follow a little 

 further the evolutions of this horn emblem. However 

 obscure may be its genesis, there is no doubt what- 

 ever that it has exercised a strange fascination over 

 the minds of people at all times, whether in its original 

 form as horns, or in the multiform phases which it 

 has acquired by migration. Even where its purpose 

 has been forgotten, through the advancement of science, 

 it remains as a survival.^ 



^ See "Ainus of Japan," by J. Batchelor, regarding " Inaos " oi Skulls 

 and Hants. 



