Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/168

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, 4th January.

the presidency of Lord Ronaldshay Sir J. C. Bose delivered a lecture this evening on "The praying palm-tree."

Sir J. C. Bose said that perhaps no phenomenon was so remarkable and shrouded with greater mystery as the performances of a particular palm tree near Faridpur. In the evening while the temple bells rang calling the people to prayer the tree bowed down as if to prostrate itself, and erected its head again in the morning. This process is repeated every day of the year. The phenomenon had been regarded as miraculous and pilgrims had been attracted in great numbers. It was also alleged that offerings made to the tree had been the means of effecting marvellous cures.

The lecturer first obtained photographs of the two positions which proved the phenomenon to be real. The next thing was to devise a special apparatus to record continuously the movement of the tree day and night. The records of the palm tree showed that it fell with the rise of temperature and rose with the fall. The records obtained with other trees brought out the extraordinary and unsuspected fact that all trees are moving, such movement being in response to changes in their environment.

Pioneer Mail, Allahabad, 11th January, 1918.

For the following note the Editor is indebted to Sir James Frazer.

Twenty-five years ago an old man in one of the parishes of Anglesey invariably bore or rather wore a sickle over his neck—in the fields, and on the road, wherever he went. He was rather reticent as to the reason why he wore it, but he clearly gave his questioner to understand that it was a protection