as very
effective, and certainly had plenty of evidence of the
_post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc_ order in its favour.

Is this practice prevalent in England?

It will be remarked that this belongs to the category of _Vicarious
Charms_, which have in all times and in all ages, in great things and
in small things, been one of the favourite resources of poor mortals
in their difficulties. Such charms (for all analogous practices may be
so called) are, in point of fact, _sacrifices_ made on the principle
so widely adopted,--_qui facit per alium facit per se_. The common
witch-charm of melting an image of wax stuck full of pins before
a slow fire, is a familiar instance. Everybody knows that the
party _imaged_ by the wax continues to suffer all the tortures of
pin-pricking until he or she finally melts away (colliquescit), or
dies in utter emaciation.

EMDEE.

_Boy or Girl._--The following mode was adopted a few years ago in
a branch of my family residing in Denbighshire, with the view of
discovering the sex of an infant previous to its birth. As I do not
remember to have met with it in other localities, it may, perhaps,
be an interesting addition to your "Folk Lore." An old woman of the
village, strongly attached to the family, asked permission to use
a harmless charm to learn if the expected infant would be male or
female. Accordingly she joined the servants at their supper, where she
assisted in clearing a shoulder of mutton of every particle of meat.
She then held the blade-bone to the fire until it was scorched, so
as to permit her to force her thumbs through the thin part. Through
the holes thus made she passed a string, and having knotted the ends
together, she drove in a nail over the back door and left the house,
giving strict injunctions to the servants to hang the bone up in that
place the last thing at night. Then they were carefully to observe who
should first enter that door on the following morning, exclusive of
the members of the household, and the sex of the child would be that
of the first comer. This rather vexed some of the servants, who wished
for a boy, as two or three women came regularly each morning to the
house, and a man was scarcely ever seen there; but to their delight
the first comer on this occasion proved to be a man, and in a few
weeks the old woman's reputation was established throughout the
neighbourhood by the birth of a boy.

M.E.F.

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