STATES OF EXISTENCE. 355 



size that an elephant could" easily have performed the 

 feat* 



Of the ammonites, we have more exact evidence ; 

 they were- observed by our forefathers, and called* by 

 them snake-stones. According to the legends of Catho- 

 lic saints they were considered as possessing a sacred 

 character : 



" Of these and snakes, each one 

 Was changed into a coil of stone 

 When holy Hilda prayed." 



And in addition to this petrifying process, one of 

 decapitation is said to have been effected; hence the 

 reason why these snake-stones have no heads. 



We also find, in the northern districts of our island, 

 that the name of " St. Cuthberfs beads " is applied to 

 the fossil remains of encrinites. 



Thus we learn that, to a great extent, fiction is 

 dependent upon truth for its creations ; and we see that 

 when we come to investigate any wide-spread popular 

 superstition, although much distorted by the medium of 

 error through which it has passed, it is frequently 

 founded upon some fragmentary truth. There are float- 

 ing in the minds of men certain ideas which are not the 

 result of any associations drawn from things around ; 

 we reckon them amongst the mysteries of our being. 

 May they not be the truths of a former world, of which 

 we receive the dim outshadowing in the present, like the 

 faint lights of a distant Pharos, seen through the mists 

 of the wide ocean ? 



Man treads upon the wreck of antiquity. In times 

 which are so long past, that the years between them 

 cannot be numbered by the aids of our science, geology 



* Fauna Antigua Sivalensis. Being the Fossil Zoology of the 

 Sewalik Hills in the North of India : by Hugh Falconer and Probv 

 T. Cautley. 1844. 



