Instrumerits of the Anlicnts. ] 7 



had his house demohshed, or, as Petronms Arbiter and 

 others affirm, lost his head, for making malleable o-Jass. 

 In modern times, it is said, that in the year IGIO, the 

 sophy of Persia sctit the king of Spain six glass vessels 

 whieh bore the operation of hammering*. 



13. udbat and Nixo7i do not appear to have extended 

 their researches to the antiquity of glass in this part of the 

 world ; which is a point of some importance. I do not 

 know any l)etter proof that the antient inhabitants of thi* 

 island, in particular, possessed the art of making glass, than 

 the specimens of their work which still exist in the glass 

 rings, with a round hole in the centre, and a verv thick 

 rim, in shape like the whirl of a distafF-spindlc, but much 

 smaller, which are found in many parts of the country. 

 By the genuine descendants of the antient Britons, they arc 

 called gleineu naidreedh, or glass-adders. I have seen se- 

 veral of them, among the country people, in the south of 

 Scotland, where their present name is adder-stones, to di- 

 stinguish them, no doubt, from certain concretions there 

 said to be formed in the heads of old toads, and called toad- 

 stones. I remember a countryman picking up a greenish 

 adder-stone, about 35 years ago, in a pcat-77ioss, or turf- 

 bog, in Dumfries-shire. He showed it to the late Rev. 

 Dr. IValker, professor of natural history in the university 

 of Edinburgh, then minister of Moftat, whose learning anil 

 ability are well known to proficients in that study. But 

 the doctor, who was not very fond of giving his opinion in 

 doubtful subjects, barely told the man that it was an amu- 

 let ; a word as mysterious to him as the modus operandi of 

 the thing signified. On consulting a dictionary, however, 

 he found that the word amulet meant a charm ; for those 

 glass rings are thought to have been used as charms by the 

 Druids; with whom, perhaps, originated the wild but wide- 

 spread notion, that they were formed by adders or vipers. 

 Certain it is, that their supposed virtues are still as much 

 venerated by some of the Scottish peasantry, as was, among 

 the Gauls, the ovum anguinum described by Pliny f^ The 



food old women use them to rub the gums of children 

 uring dentition, and parts affected with pain in persons 

 of all ages; and, perhaps, it would not be easy to prov§ 

 them to be less efficacious than the modern tractors. 



14. AH the adder-stones I have seen, though evidently 

 of glass, were opake, and some of them beautifully varie- 



'•■' Harris's Lex. Tech. Supp. and Bai/ry's Fol. Diet. 2d ed. art. G.'f'is, 

 + Nat. Hist. lib. xxix. r. 3. as quoted in the Miastrelsy of the Scot- 

 tish Border, \'oI. ii. p. 404.. 



Vol 20. No. 77. Oct. J 804. B gated^ 



