that
name, the Chelonites, a grass-green stone found in a swallow's belly,
the Draconites, which must be cut out of the head of a live serpent,
the Hyaenia from the eye of the Hyaena, and the Saurites from the bowels
of a green lizard. All these and the Echites, or viper-stone, were
credited with extraordinary magical virtues, and many of the
assertions of later writers about the toad-stone are clearly due to
their having calmly transferred the marvellous stories about other
imaginary stones to the imaginary toad-stone. The only stone in the
above list which has a real existence is that in the fish's head. Fish
have a pair of beautiful translucent stones in their heads--the
ear-stones or otoliths--by the laminated structure of which we can now
determine the age of a fish just as a tree's age is told by the annual
rings of growth in the wood of its stem. The fresh-water crayfish has
a very curious pair of opaque stones (concretions of carbonate and
phosphate of lime) formed in its gizzard as a normal and regular
thing. They are familiar to every student who dissects a crayfish, and
I am told that in Germany to-day, as in old times also, the
"krebstein" is regarded by the country-folk as possessed of medicinal
and magical properties. I am not able, on the present occasion, to
trace out the possible origin of all the stories and beliefs about
stones occurring within animals. They are more numerous than those
cited by Pliny; they exist in every race and every civilization and
refer to a large variety of animals. Probably many of these beliefs
date from prehistoric times. In the East the most celebrated of these
stones, since the period of Arabic civilisation, is called a
bezoar-stone, "Bezoar" is the Persian word for "antidote," and does
not apply only to a stone. The true and original "bezoar-stone" of the
East is a concretion found in the intestine of the Persian wild goat.
Those which I have seen are usually of the size and shape of a
pigeon's egg and of a fine mahogany colour, with a smooth, polished
surface. The Persian goat's bezoar-stone is found, on chemical
analysis, to consist of "ellagic acid," an acid allied to gallic acid,
the vegetable astringent product which occurs in oak-galls used until
lately in the manufacture of ink. The bezoar-stone is probably a
concretion formed in the intestine from some of the undigested
portions of the goat's food. Such concretions are not uncommon, and
occur even in man. "Bezoar-