Page:Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme.djvu/14

 I soon saw that to do the work as it should be done would be to render it a complete treatise upon folklore, so varied are the matters upon which it touches; and this was not the intention of the Society in issuing the volume, which should be looked upon rather as a collection of suggestive notes, or a storehouse from which all may take away what suits them best. I have been at some pains, however, to collect from Aubrey's other works such passages as belong to folklore, and these I have placed in the Appendix.

The ''Natural Hist. of Wiltshire'' quoted is the volume edited by John Britton in 1847 for the Wiltshire Topographical Society; one or two of his additional notes, signed J. B., are added. By the kindness of the Royal Society I have been able to consult their MS. of this work; the extracts I have made from this, which have not previously been published, are referred to as Royal Soc, MS. I have not made extracts from what is perhaps Aubrey's most important work from a folklore point of view—I mean his Miscellanies; to have done so would have unduly extended the present volume, and moreover it is easily accessible in the cheap and handy reprint issued in 1857 by J. Russell Smith, which no folklorist should be without. Another work which I think is not as well known as it should be, and which may profitably be consulted by students, is Mr. T. J. Pettigrew's little volume On Superstitions connected with the History and Practice of Medicine and Surgery. (London, 1844, pp. 167.)

I may perhaps be allowed to point out how fully