AUGURY. 
GG7 
wanted solutions ; and the man within pronounced the responses in a 
tone of voice similar to that with which the Obs, or pretended 
demons /of antiquity, gave from beneath the ground their oracular 
answers. 
Another species, called Ta^liaiiin-au-uisge, or taghaning by water, 
was also practised in the isle of Skye, by a man named M’Cuidhcan, 
whose ancestors had long been famous for the art. He lived nc^r a beau- 
tiful cascade on a small river, and when consulted on any matter of con- 
sequence, he covered his whole body with a cow’s hide, and placed him- 
self between the water of the cascade and the rock over which it flowed. 
Then another man, with a heavy pole, gave repeated strokes to the 
water, the diviner behind it crying out now and then, in Gaelic, ‘Hs 
this a stock of arn This operation was continued till M‘Cuidhean 
w'as perceived to be frantic or furious, when he was considered as in 
a condition to answer the most important questions. He was fre- 
quently consulted about futurity ; and though he could not, in the 
proper sense of the word, be called a necromancer, his responses 
were listened to as proceeding from something more than human. 
A degree of frenzy, either real or affected, seems to have accompanied 
the predictions of certain kinds of diviners in all ages, and we caruiut 
help remarking the similarity between the madness of M‘Cuidheau. 
and that of the Sybil in the.$lneid, lib. vi. ver. B7~90. though we can- 
not suppose the former to have been borrowed from the latter. That 
ail these pretences, whether ancient or modern, to the power of divi - 
nati{)n by means of familiar spirits, or by the art of necromancy, w'erc 
groundless as well as impious, it is needless to offer any proof. 
An exhibition was some time ago opened at the Lyceum in the 
Strand, London, which the proprietor denominated Phantasma- 
goria. With the common magic-lantern alone, varying the use of 
it by placing the spectators behind instead of before the screen, he 
imitated the imaginary forms of spectres, their unexpected appear- 
ance, their instantaneous vanishing, and all the other particulars, vul- 
garly said to belong to the department of ghosts, with the greatest 
success. His entertaining exhibitions denionstialed the simplicity 
of the means by which necromancers have achieved their most fear- 
ful exploits. ' 
AUGURY. 
Augury is the art of foretelling, presaging, or predicting, from 
observing the flight and actions of birds, or otherwise. Among the 
old Romans, this art was distributed into five divisions. The first was 
from appearances in the heavens, as thunder and lightning, meteors, 
comets, &c. Prosperous auguries of this kind were thunder or light- 
ning on the left, — because whatever comes to us from the skies on our 
left, is sent by the gods from their right. The Persians and the 
Greeks, on the contrary, looked on thunder from the right as favour- 
able (Xcn. III. ii. 353.) Again, fortunate signs were deduced by 
lightning shot from the east, and returning again, after a circuit of 
the sky, to the same quarter — a portent which is said to have occurred 
to the dictator Sylla ; or if it struck the earth, and seemed to rebound. 
