NATURAL SCIENCE NEWS. 



87 



by utilizing them as material for 

 foundations or for fences. Drift 

 gravel, too is largely utilized, and 

 the roads of the state, at least the 

 best of them, are gravelled with 

 pebbles which were brought hun- 

 dreds of miles by the glacier. 



Angus Gaines, 

 Vincinnes, Ind. 



Eye-Stones and Mad-Stones. 



In the course of our lives we 

 hear a good deal regarding eye- 

 stones and mad-stones, but com- 

 paratively few persons know what 

 they are, how they are used, or 

 where they come from. Queer 

 old stories,hang round these mys- 

 terious substances, and of course 

 the tales grow until we hardly 

 know what to believe. For in- 

 stance one man informed me that 

 a very old and valuable eye-stone 

 in his family, had cured two cases 

 of blindness, and it is quite a com- 

 mon thing to read accounts of peo- 

 ple being saved from that dread 

 disease hydrophobia by the ap- 

 plication of a mad-stone to the 

 wound made by the rabid dog's 

 teeth. People are very apt to be 

 credulous, even in this enlightened 

 age, as they have been in past ages. 

 As I have made something of a 

 study of these vaunted, yet inter- 

 esting objects, a few notes may 

 not come amiss to my readers, as 

 they show the fallacy of some of 

 the ridiculous notions generally 

 held. 



When I was a boy, a man show- 

 ed me an eye-stone which he 

 claimed had been in his family for 

 several generations and which 

 would work wonders in all 

 eye troubles; allaying irritations 

 removing foreign bodies from the 

 eye or under the lids, and curing 

 blindness, cataracts, etc., to the 

 end of the chapter. In truth, all 

 eye-doctors might as well go out 

 of business when that stone was 

 in the neigborhood, for its powers 

 were far reaching and not to be 

 disputed. 



Of course I believed him im- 

 plicitly, for boys are credulous, 

 particularly regarding articles of 

 great pecuniary value, and I look- 

 ed on this precious article with 

 greater veneration than a diamond 

 or other jewel could have possi- 

 bly impressed me. And when my 

 adult acquaintance maintained that 

 the stone was alive, of course I 

 believed him. For why should 

 not a boy believe as strongly as a 

 man, and my acquaintance believ- 

 ed in the life of this wonderful 



stone. To convince me, he took 

 the little eye-stone and dropped it 

 into a dish of vinegar, when, after 

 a few minutes it awakened from 

 its sleep and began to slide about 

 the bottom in a jerky sort of way. 

 But the man could tell me nothing 

 more. He only knew that the 

 stone was very valuable, and that 

 money would not buy it, and that 

 it could cure blindness. He did 

 not know what it was, or where it 

 came from. In fact he knew just 

 as much as his grandmother, and 

 no more, and three generations 

 had not helped his family for 

 knowledge in this respect. 



Later, I saw the eye-stones work, 

 often with benefit to the patient. 

 They are little fiat stones appar- 

 ently: white or nearly so, flat on 

 one side and rounded, that is, con- 

 vex on the other and shaped some- 

 what like the hall of a split pea, 

 but much more flattened. If a 

 person has a cinder in the eye and 

 it cannot be readily removed, the 

 eye-stone should be introduced 

 under the upper eyelid at the in- 

 ner corner or angle of the eye. 

 Then the eye-stone will be shortly 

 found to have passed to the outer 

 corner, and it will naturally have 

 the foreign body with it. 



Of course the stone moves 

 through the action of the eyelid 

 muscles; but the ignorant credit 

 the inanimate substance with life, 

 and idle stories continue to grow 

 and be repeated by those who are 

 given to stretching the truth, and 

 who do not investigate. 



On one occasion in the winter, 

 on the Eastern coast of Florida, 

 during a storm, thousands of these 

 little eye-stones were washed up- 

 on the beach, and we gathered all 

 we wished, of sizes ranging from a 

 very small split pea to nearly that 

 of a quarter of a dollar, and if the)' 

 could be sold for a dollar each in- 

 stead of 5i,ooo, I would spend my 

 entire time gathering them from 

 the seashore. Then the subject 

 was looked up more fully, and it 

 proved that the eye-stone is sim- 

 ply the operculum from the shells 

 of the. family Turbinida and that 

 there are undoubtly millions of 

 them lining our sea coast. 



The * operculum is that portion 

 of the animal which enables it to 

 close its shell to its enemies and 

 thus protect itself against invasion, 

 and is a singular and useful ar- 

 rangement which is attached to the 

 muscles of its locomotive apparat- 

 us; so said. 



* Many shells are provided with this useful 

 arrangement. The lid as it is called is of vari- 

 ous forms in the different species. The Whelk 

 is provided with an operculum. 



In order to satisfy myself re- 

 garding the power of vinegar to 

 move them, a number of the oper- 

 cula were placed in a vessel 

 containing strong vinegar, when 

 the movements which had sur- 

 prised me as a boy, fully thirty 

 years ago, were repeated. Of 

 course the idea that the eye-stones 

 were alive, had long since given 

 away to mature reasoning, and I 

 was anxious to find the cause of 

 the irregular, jerky movements. 

 Several were left in the vinegar 

 over night, when considerable 

 roughness was apparent on the 

 surface, and after a few days they 

 showed signs of much corrosion. 

 This indicated that the acid in the 

 vinegar worked on the shell. 

 Procuring some strong acetic acid, 

 which is the chief factor in vine- 

 gar, an operculum was dropped 

 into it, when the acid ate into the 

 calcareous substance and entirely 

 consumed it within less than for- 

 ty-eight hours. This convinced 

 me that the movements of the ig- 

 norantly credited live stone were 

 caused entirely through chemical 

 action. 



Regarding the value of eye- 

 stones, I will not pretend to speak 

 with knowledge, but do not doubt 

 that they are serviceable at times 

 in relieving suffering by their 

 power to assist in the removal of 

 foreign substances from beneath 

 the eye-lids. Still when I tell you 

 that two ophthalmologists of the 

 modern school did not know what 

 the eye-stones were when I show- 

 ed them some, rather indicates 

 that these priceless ( ? ) articles 

 have rather dropped out of the 

 sphere of recent eye-doctor's prac- 

 tice. 



Of mad-stones there is a great 

 variety; and it is a fact that I have 

 never seen two just alike unless 

 they were manufactured or mined 

 by the same person. However 

 the)' are all alike, in that they are 

 light and porous and possess the 

 power of absorbing moisture. All 

 that have come under my notice, 

 whether drab, buff-colored, red- 

 dish or yellowish, possessed the 

 quality of adhering to the flesh 

 when the skin was moistened. As 

 soon as the moisture was absorbed 

 the clay (mad-stone) fell from its 

 hold. 



East Indian mad-stones, that I 

 have seen, are of a diameter of 

 two inches or less, rounded, iiat- 

 ened and of about one quarter of 

 an inch in thickness or less. Fab- 

 ulous prices have been paid for 

 these supposed preservers of men's 

 lives, and many of them are made 



