Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/364

344 Indians were "making arrowheads of jasper, arrowheads of chalcedony," (Hiawatha).

Beads, although generally regarded as merely ornaments, are also charms. Indeed, I am of the opinion that all beads were originally worn as such, for I think & may take it that the first bead worn by prehistoric man was simply a stone with a hole through it, which being in his opinion uncanny and unaccountable, was at once invested with mystic power; besides, many naturally perforated stones are exceedingly suggestive of eyes, and even now holed stones are worn as charms against the Evil Eve. The cretaceous fossil organism Porosphora globularis, has been found in France as a necklet associated with a burial of the Neolithic period; and portions of the stems of Encrinites, sometimes called St. Cuthbert's beads, help to throw light upon the origin of modern beads. But this is too wide a subject to discuss in this paper.

Having thus referred to the various charms and amulets bearing upon the remarkable revelation which I came upon with such surprise, and at the same time with such real regret, I will now proceed to describe the collection of specimens before you.

It seems to have occurred to some dreadfully ingenious individual that if he could only get a quantity of the highly-prized objects worn by the natives of countries where such things as ivory, skins, gold-dust, and similar trifles were obtainable, it would be uncommonly good business. So original specimens were got and copies carefully made—in Bohemia, of course! Curiously enough, the native took to the innovation, although with that keen sense of his he must have known that his tiger-tooth or his shell-disc was not of the orthodox material.

But now comes a still more remarkable point. Not content with really beautifully-made facsimiles of these charm objects, in which even the colours showed that those who copied these teeth and shells were real artists, fancy colours