they were
stamped was still in a state of softness. Superstition has invested
them with a sacred veneration, and legends of a wild and mystical
character have gathered around them. The slightest acquaintance with
the results of geological research has sufficed to dispel this
delusion, and to show that these mysterious marks could not have been
produced by human beings while the rocks were in a state of fusion;
and consequently no intelligent observer now holds this theory of
their origin. But superstition dies hard; and there are persons who,
though confronted with the clearest evidences of science, still refuse
to abandon their old obscurantist ideas. They prefer a supernatural
theory that allows free scope to their fancy and religious instinct,
to one that offers a more prosaic explanation. There is a charm in the
mystery connected with these dim imaginings which they would not wish
dispelled by the clear daylight of scientific knowledge. In our own
country, footmarks on rocks and stones are by no means of unfrequent
occurrence. Some of them, indeed, although associated with myths and
fairy tales, have doubtless been produced by natural causes, being the
mere chance effects of weathering, without any meaning except to a
geologist. But there are others that have been unmistakably produced
by artificial means, and have a human history and significance.

In Scotland Tanist stones--so called from the Gaelic word _tanaiste_,
a chief, or the next heir to an estate--have been frequently found.
These stones were used in connection with the coronation of a king or
the inauguration of a chief. The custom dates from the remotest
antiquity. We see traces of it in the Bible,--as when it is mentioned
that "Abimelech was made king by the oak of the pillar that was in
Shechem"; and "Adonijah slew sheep and oxen and fat cattle by the
stone of Zoheleth, which is by En-rogel, and called all his brethren
the king's sons, and all the men of Judah the king's servants"; and
that when Joash was anointed king by Jehoiada, "the king stood by a
pillar, as the manner was"; and again, King Josiah "stood by a
pillar" to make a covenant, "and all the people stood to the
covenant." The stone connected with the ceremony was regarded as the
most sacred attestation of the engagement entered into between the
newly-elected king or chief and his people. It was placed in some
conspicuous position, upon the top of a "moot-hill," or the open-air
place of as