it is "forced to yield the gauntlet," and may then be readily 

 broken into pieces. The mere assertion of such an absurdity 

 by so high an authority was sufficient to establish its 

 credibility ; the idea of testing the statement by experiment 

 was not deemed necessary nor advisable, that step remained 

 to be taken by another generation under the Baconian philo- 

 sophy. Pliny's "Natural History" was responsible for a mass 

 of superstitions tenaciously held by the common people; it 

 was gravely maintained that: "There be certain seeds within 

 the eyes of cocks which shining and shooting into the eyes 

 of lions do so pierce and strike their eyelids, and do inflict 

 upon them such pain and grief, that they are constrained to 

 fly from them, being not able to abide or to endure the sight 

 of a cock." It was also asserted that the "eyes of a dragon 

 dried, pulverized and incorporated with honey into a liniment 

 caused those who anointed themselves all over with it to 

 sleep securely without dread .of night spirits." In these and 

 similar instances the rarity of the animals, or the scarcity of 

 the ingredients made experimental tests very difficult; this 

 was the case also with the following recipe for a wonder- 

 working amulet: "Take the tail and head of a dragon, the 

 hair growing on the forehead of a lion with a little also of 

 his marrow, the froth that a horse foameth at the mouth 

 who had won the victory and prize in running a race, and 

 the nails besides of a dog's feet, bind all these together with 

 a piece of leather made of a red deer-skin with the sinews 

 partly of a stag and partly of a fallow deer, one with an- 

 other in alternate courses; carry this about you and it will 

 give you victory." (Pliny.) 



Forty-three years before Rudolph ascended the throne of 

 Germany a work was published that did much to elevate 

 magic in the opinions of philosophers, and exerted immense 

 influence on popular beliefs for more than two centuries, this 



17O 



