SHELLS AS CHARMS OR AMULETS. 
433 
and the gradual attribution to them of a sympathetic attraction and 
affection for the places of sepulchre where repose the dead. 
The Romans, who derived many of their superstitions from the 
Greeks, especially reverenced the internal shells of the slugs, believing 
them to be powerfully curative in cases of tertian, quartan and inter- 
mittent fevers when worn around the neck of the patient and falling 
towards the heart, and that diseases of the head or headaches were 
cured by carrying the shell upon the person or rubbing the forehead 
with the minced or pounded animal; while the granular substance 
representing the shell in Avion, if suspended from the necks of 
infants, was firmly believed to facilitate teething. 
Warts are believed by many rural folk to be easily removable if a 
living slug be rubbed over the affected part and the animal then im- 
paled upon a thorn, in some secluded place, and left to die. As the 
snail dies and gradually shrivels up, the wart, being impregnated 
with its matter, will shortly do the same and gradually disappear. 
Worn firagments of shells or Snail-stones were formerly esteemed 
in the Scottish Highlands and in Guernsey as a remedy for affections 
of the eyes, but the Snail-stone of Scotland, to which many mysterious 
virtues were long ascribed, was merely a piece of blue glass. 
In some barbarous countries many species, especially if sinistrally 
coiled, are reverenced as sacred, or as charms protecting the owner 
from evil spirits or disease. 
The Kabyles of Algeria perforate the ends of the valves of Unio 
pict(yvum, which they call thimah’riu, and suspend them around the 
necks of their children as Amulets, believing them to be a powerful 
protection against evil influences. 
The negroes of Prince’s Islands formerly were in the habit of 
suspending a string of Helix bicarinata above the doors of their 
cabins, as an act pleasing to the gods and calculated to secure their 
protection ; while Achatina perdix was formerly forbidden to be ex- 
ported from the East Indies, probably from some ancient superstition 
regarding it. 
Reversed varieties of the Turbonilla or Chauk Shell are held sacred 
in the far East. In India the God Vishnu is represented holding this 
shell in his hand, while in China they are kept in the Tem2)les, and 
used only for anointing the Emperor on his coronation, for the 
administration of medicine on important occasions, and for bestowal 
by the Emperor upon high officials, whose duties oblige them to cross 
C2 
22 , 12/1900 
