CHESS AND PLAYING-CARDS. 



819 



other. P. Delia Valle (II, 865-866) describes the same process, conducted bya Moham- 

 medan conjuror of Aleppo: 'By his incantations he made the four points of the arrows 

 come together without any movement of the holders, and by tlie way the points 

 spontaneously placed themselves, obtained answers to interrogatories.' And Mr. 

 .Jaeshke writes from Tjahaul : 'There are many different ways of divination practiced 

 among the Buddhists ; and that also mentioned by Marco Polo is known to our Lama, 

 but in a slightly different way, making use of two arrows, instead of a cane split up, 

 wherefore this kind is called da-mo (arrow divination).' Indeed, the practice is not 

 extinct in India, for in 1833 Mr. Vigne (I, 46) witnessed its application to detect the 

 robber of a government chest at Lodiana. 



It will be observed that in three of the examples the sticks or twigs 

 are replaced by arrows. 



Fig. 135. 



PEBBLES FROM MAS D'AZU,. 



In concluding tliis examination, reference should be made to the sug- 

 gestion by Col, Garrick Mallery' that the colored pebbles found in the 

 grotto of Mas d'Azil, in the department of Ariege, France, were used in 

 gaining. 



Only one face of these pebbles bears a design (tig. 135). Colonel Mal- 

 lery says : 



To an observer familiar with the gambling games of the North American Indians, 

 in which marked plum-stones and similar objects are employed, these stained flat 

 pebbles at once suggest their use to suggest values in a game by the several designs 

 and by the pebbles falling on the figureil or on the unmarked side.- 



1 Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, p. 549. 



^Ed.Piette, Les galets colorics du Mas-d'azil, L' Anthropologic, VII, No. 3. 



