206 ANNUAL ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR DUNS, D.D., P.K.S.E., 



&c. Thirty years ago specimens of these were frequently 

 brought to me by miners as " petrified snakes " — "• lucky 

 stanes," "• guid against chincough," and " other ailings." 

 When their nature was explained and thanks given for the 

 gift, the question was several times put, " what for then dae 

 ye keep them ? " But Scottish miners are not alone in 

 credulity. " In a small collection of petrifactions," says a 

 Danish bishop, " is a snake as thick as a linger, worked with, 

 one side pressed into pyrites, whence it received a bright 

 copper colour, which I trace to the Deluge ! " " Whitby's 

 thousand snakes " are simply fossilized specimens of cepha- 

 lopodous mollusca. 



4. Bead-Stone is also named St. Cuthbert's beads. Fairy 

 beads. Limestone beads, and St. Boniface's money (Nuin- 

 muli Sancti Bonifacii), they are the ring-like transverse 

 sections of the so-called vertical column of stalked Echiuo- 

 derms, the well-known Encrinites of the palaeontologists, 

 which occur in such immense numbers in some limestones 

 as to give their name to them — Encrinal Limestones. The 

 palgeontological and recent history of these forms is one of 

 peculiar interest. It introduces us to biological facts more 

 wonderful by far than all the imaginary qualities ascribed to 

 the Encrinite by the illiterate and superstitious. But it is 

 folk and not science-lore we have now to deal with. Scott 

 seldom missed any aspects of the former, current in the 

 districts associated with his poems. Thus his reference to 

 St. Cuthbert's beads — 



" But fain St. Hilda's maids would learn 

 If on a rock by Landisfearn 

 St. Cuthbert sits and toils to frame 

 The sea-born beads which bear his name." 



His reference to the " thousand snakes " has been noticed. 

 He seems to have believed in the " snake legend," but did 

 not well know what to make of the " beads." In his notes 

 to Marmion he speaks of " the relics of snakes, which are 

 still found about the rocks, and are termed by Protestant (!) 

 fossilists, Ammonitse," but referring to the beads, he uses 

 the term imder which old writers hid their ignorance, " these 

 Entroclii are found among the rocks of Holy Island." In 

 localities where the beads occur, they are still in greai 

 favour with children who make necklaces of them, or, m 

 mimic shop-keeping use them as money. The charm 

 associated Vvith them, when they were hung to the cradle's 



