divine by means of his dirty cloth or cap instead,1 so the modern clairvoyant professes to feel sympathetically the sensations of a distant person, if communication be made through a lock of his hair or any object that has been in contact with him. The simple idea of joining two objects with a cord, taking for granted that this communication will establish connexion or carry influence, has been worked out in various ways in the world. In Australia, the native doctor fastens one end of a string to the ailing part of the patient's body, and by sucking at the other end pretends to draw out blood for his relief.3 In Orissa, the Jeypore witch lets down a ball of thread through her enemy's roof to reach his body, that by putting the other end in her own mouth she may suck his blood. When a reindeer is sacrificed at a sick Ostyak's tent-door, the patient holds in his hand a cord attached to the victim offered for his benefit.5 Greek history shows a similar idea, when the citizens of Ephesus carried a rope seven furlongs from their walls to the temple of Artemis, thus to place themselves under her safeguard against the attack of Croesus; and in the yet more striking story of the Kylonians, who tied a cord to the statue of the goddess when they quitted the asylum, and clung to it for protection as they crossed unhallowed ground; but by ill-fate the cord of safety broke and they were mercilessly put to death. And in our own day, Buddhist priests in solemn ceremony put themselves in communication with a sacred relic, by each taking hold of a long thread fastened near it and around the temple.7

Magical arts in which the connexion is that of mere analogy or symbolism are endlessly numerous throughout

1 Burton, W. and W. from West Africa,' p. 411.

2 W. Gregory, 'Letters on Animal Magnetism,' p. 128.

3 Eyre, Australia,' vol. ii. p. 361; Collins, New South Wales,' vol. i. pp. 561, 594.

4 Shortt, in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. vi. p. 278.

5 Bastian, Mensch.' vol. iii. p. 117.

6 See Grote, vol. iii. pp. 113, 351.

7 Hardy, Eastern Monachism,' p. 241.

the course of civilization. Their common theory may be readily made out from a few typical cases, and thence applied confidently to the general mass. The Australian will observe the track of an insect near a grave, to ascertain the direction where the sorcerer is to be found, by whose craft the man died. The Zulu may be seen chewing a bit of wood, in order, by this symbolic act, to soften the heart of the man he wants to buy oxen from, or of the woman he wants for a wife. The Obi-man of West Africa makes his packet of grave-dust, blood, and bones, that this suggestive representation of death may bring his enemy to the grave.3 The Khond sets up the iron arrow of the War-god in a basket of rice, and judges from its standing upright that war must be kept up also, or from its falling that the quarrel may be let fall too; and when he tortures human victims sacrificed to the Earth-goddess, he rejoices to see them shed plentiful tears, which betoken copious showers to fall upon his land. These are fair examples of the symbolic magic of the lower races, and they are fully rivalled in superstitions which still hold their ground in Europe. With quaint simplicity, the German cottager declares that if a dog howls looking downward, it portends a death; but if upward, then a recovery from sickness.5 Locks must be opened and bolts drawn in a dying man's house, that his soul may not be held fast. The Hessian lad thinks that he may escape the conscription by carrying a baby-girl's cap in his pocket-a symbolic way of repudiating manhood. Modern Servians, dancing and singing, lead about a little girl dressed in leaves and flowers, and pour bowls of water over her to make the rain come.8 Sailors becalmed will sometimes

1 Oldfield, in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. iii. p. 246.

2 Grout, Zulu-land,' p. 134.

3 See specimen and description in the Christy Museum.

4 Macpherson, India,' pp. 130, 363.

Wuttke, 'Volksaberglaube,' p. 31.

6 R. Hunt, Pop. Rom. of W. of England,' 2nd ser. p. 165; Brand, 'Pop.

Ant.' vol. ii. p. 231.

7 Wuttke, p. 100.

8 Grimm, 'D. M.' p. 560.

whistle for a wind; but in other weather they hate whistling at sea, which raises a whistling gale.1 Fish, says the Cornishman, should be eaten from the tail towards the head, to bring the other fishes' heads towards the shore, for eating them the wrong way turns them from the coast.2 He who has cut himself should rub the knife with fat, and as it dries, the wound will heal; this is a lingering survival from days when recipes for sympathetic ointment were to be found in the Pharmacopoeia.3 Fanciful as these notions are, it should be borne in mind that they come fairly under definite mental law, depending as they do on a principle of ideal association, of which we can quite understand the mental action, though we deny its practical results. The clever Lord Chesterfield, too clever to understand folly, may again be cited to prove this. He relates in one of his letters that the king had been ill, and that people generally expected the illness to be fatal, because the oldest lion in the Tower, about the king's age, had just died. "So wild and capricious is the human mind," he exclaims, by way of comment. But indeed the thought was neither wild nor capricious, it was simply such an argument from analogy as the educated world has at length painfully learnt to be worthless; but which, it is not too much to declare, would to this day carry considerable weight to the minds of fourfifths of the human race.

A glance at those magical arts which have been systematized into pseudo-sciences, shows the same underlying principle. The art of taking omens from seeing and meeting animals, which includes augury, is familiar to such savages as the Tupis of Brazil and the Dayaks of Borneo,5 and extends upward through classic civilization. The Maoris may give a sample of the character of its rules: they

Brand, vol. iii. p. 240.

2 Hunt, ibid. p. 148.

3 Wuttke, p. 165; Brand, vol. iii. p 305.

Magalhanes de Gandavo, p. 125; D'Orbigny, vol. ii. p. 168.

St. John, 'Far East,' vol. i. p. 202; Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. ii. p. 357.

hold it unlucky if an owl hoots during a consultation, but a council of war is encouraged by prospect of victory when a hawk flies overhead; a flight of birds to the right of the war-sacrifice is propitious if the villages of the tribe are in that quarter, but if the omen is in the enemy's direction the war will be given up. Compare these with the Tatar rules, and it is obvious that similar thoughts lie at the source of both. Here a certain little owl's cry is a sound of terror, although there is a white owl which is lucky; but of all birds the white falcon is most prophetic, and the Kalmuk bows his thanks for the good omen when one flies by on the right, but seeing one on the left turns away his face and expects calamity. So to the negro of Old Calabar, the cry of the great kingfisher bodes good or evil, according as it is heard on the right or left. Here we have the obvious symbolism of the right and left hand, the foreboding of ill from the owl's doleful note, and the suggestion of victory from the fierce swooping hawk, a thought which in old Europe made the bird of prey the warrior's omen of conquest. Meaning of the same kind appears in the Angang,' the omens taken from meeting animals and people, especially on first going out in the morning, as when the ancient Slaves held meeting a sick man or an old woman to bode ill-luck. Any one who takes the trouble to go into this subject in detail, and to study the classic, mediæval, and oriental codes of rules, will find that the principle of direct symbolism still accounts for a fair proportion of them, though the rest may have lost their early significance, or may have been originally due to some other reason, or may have been arbitrarily invented (as a considerable proportion of such devices must necessarily be) to fill up the gaps in the system. It is still plain to us why the omen of the crow should be different on the right or left hand, why a vulture should mean rapacity, a stork concord, a pelican piety, an ass labour, why the

1 Yate, 'New Zealand,' p. 90; Polack, vol. i. p. 248.

2 Klemm, Cultur-Gesch.' vol. iii. p. 202.

3 Burton, Wit and Wisdom from West Africa,' p. 381.

6

fierce conquering wolf should be a good omen, and the timid hare a bad one, why bees, types of an obedient nation, should be lucky to a king, while flies, returning however often they are driven off, should be signs of importunity and impudence.1 And as to the general principle that animals are ominous to those who meet them, the German peasant who says a flock of sheep is lucky but a herd of swine unlucky to meet, and the Cornish miner who turns away in horror when he meets an old woman or a rabbit on his way to the pit's mouth, are to this day keeping up relics of early savagery as genuine as any flint implement dug out of a tumulus.

The doctrine of dreams, attributed as they are by the lower and middle races to spiritual intercourse, belongs in so far rather to religion than to magic. But oneiromancy, the art of taking omens from dreams by non-natural interpretation, has its place here. Of the leading principle of such mystical explanation, no better types could be chosen than the details and interpretations of Joseph's dreams (Genesis xxxvii., xl., xli.), of the sheaves and the sun and moon and eleven stars, of the vine and the basket of meats, of the lean and fat kine, and the thin and full corn-ears. Oneiromancy, thus symbolically interpreting the things seen in dreams, is not unknown to the lower races. A whole Australian tribe has been known to decamp because one of them dreamt of a certain kind of owl, which dream the wise men declared to forebode an attack from a certain other tribe.2 The Kamchadals, whose minds ran much on dreams, had special interpretations of some; thus to dream of lice or dogs betokened a visit of Russian travellers, &c.3 The Zulus, experience having taught them the fallacy of expecting direct fulfilment of dreams, have in some cases tried to mend

1 See Cornelius Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia,' i. 53; 'De Vanitate Scient.' 37; Grimm, D. M.' p. 1073; Hanusch, Slaw. Myth.' p. 285; Brand, vol. iii. pp. 184-227.

2 Oldfield in Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. iii. p. 241.