CHESS AND PLAYING-CARDS. 



893 



A method of fortune telling, based upon the sixteen combinations of 

 single and double dots, taken four at a time, worked by means of a 

 table not unlike tliat employed in sikkhj, is to be found in a popular 

 handbook entitled, "The Gypsy Dream Book and Fortune Teller," 

 M. J. Ivers & Co., New York, under the title of "The Oraculum; or, 

 Napoleon Buonaparte's Book of Fate." 



The diagrams or dot combinations: . . • etc., are discovered by 

 making four rows of dots at random .* '. *. and afterwards count- 

 ing them, even yielding . . and odd . ' 



Eeviewing the references in the Greek and Roman classics to divin- 

 atory practices with rods resembling those above described, there is to 

 be found in Ammianus Marcellinus^ the following 

 account of the custom of the Alani: 



They predict the future in a marvelous way. They take 

 straight rods of osier, and, separating them with certain 

 secret charms at a fixed time, they know clearly what is 

 meant. ^ 



Herodotus relates : 



Scythia has an abundance of soothsayers, who foretell the 

 future by means of a number of willow wands. A large 

 bundle of these wands is brought and laid on the ground. 

 The soothsayer unties the bundle and places each waud by 

 itself,-' at the same time uttering his prophecy. Then, while 

 he is still speaking, he gathers the rods together again, and 

 makes them up once more into a bundle. This mode of 

 divination is of home growth in Scythia. * 



The latter account does not agree except so far as 

 concerns the bundle of rods, but almost exact par- 

 allels to the zeichaltU, both in luimber and method 

 of manipulation, are to be found among many abo- 

 riginal tribes in America. A resume of the descrip- 

 tions given by the early writers is furnished in that 

 admirable paper on " Indian Games " by Mr. Andrew ^""" '^""''" *^^™'''" 



McFarland Davis, published in the Bulletin of the Essex Institute,^ 



'Volume XXXI, p. 2. 



^Somewhat comparable is the custom of the Guinea negroes described by Bosman 

 (William Bosman, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea; trans- 

 lated in Pinkerton's Voyages, London, 1814, X^'I, p. 309) : "'If the priest is inclined 

 to oblige the querent the questions are i>ut to the idol in his presence, and gener- 

 ally in one of the two following methods: The first Avay is by a bundle of about 

 twenty small bits of leather, in the middle of which they bind some trash of the 

 same nature with that they fill the mentioned pipe; some of these ingredients pi'om- 

 ise good success and others threaten the contrary. '1 his bundle the priest shuffles 

 together several times, and if those which presage a good issue happen to come fre- 

 quently together he answers the querent that his undertaking sliall end well." 



=^0. Schrader, "One bidiind anotlier," Prehistoric Antiquities, translated by Frank 

 Byron Jevons, London, 1890, p. 279. 



"Book IV, (57, Kawlinson, New York, 1893, III, p. 46. 



'^Volumes XVII, Nos. 7-9, 188.") ; X VIII, Nos. 10-12. 1886. 



Fig. 205. 



ONE STICK PLACED BE- 

 TWEEN LITTLE FINGEE 

 AND THIRD FINGER. 



