148 



Witches' Brooms. 



the broom are very soft and are arranged in circles, but the broom 

 dies and withers after four or five years. Some of the fungi 

 producing these brooms have two generations alternating between 

 two plants. Every species of tree that bears a broom has its own 

 special gall-mite or fungus as the active agent in provoking its 

 growth ; and whether the agent be animal or vegetable it causes a 

 rapid and unnatural bud development upon a thickened woody base. 

 The Hornbeam owes its broom to the Exoascus carpini. 



I am aware that this is an Archaeological as well as a Natural 

 History Society, and therefore with this brief explanation of the 

 biology of these curious structures I will turn to the archaeological 

 aspect of the subject, and endeavour to show how witches' brooms 

 came to possess that name, and to be mixed up with witchcraft. 



A belief in supernatural influence exists in every primitive 

 people. Wherever the sun rises in the east to sink in the west, 

 and, putting on the cap of darkness, travels back through the 

 unknown land until he comes to the east again, those who watch 

 him develop the idea of another world. And wherever men 

 dream and hold converse with those who have passed away, they 

 people that unknown land with the spirits of the departed, and 

 believe that when those spirits have left that western shore, where 

 the sun goes down, they still watch over and care for the living. 

 The dead chief watches over his tribe, and the father over his 

 children, to see that they act justly to each other. If a Zulu were 

 to ill-treat his brother he believes that his father's spirit would 

 come to him in a dream and injure him. Every unaccountable 

 circumstance is referred by the primitive mind to this ghostly 

 interference. A child while teething has convulsions — the spirit 

 father has sent a demon to rend the child. It is to remind its 

 parents of something they have omitted to do, and they offer a 

 meat offering and a drink offering that these may rise in a cloud 

 to the offended spirit. The sacrifice is offered, the evil spirit is 

 exorcised, and the child recovers. 



One of the oldest records existing is a memorial tablet preserved 

 in the Bibliotheque in Paris. It belongs to the time of Barneses 

 XII., and is about three thousand years old. It tells us that the 



