which give them light.[1] Certain varieties of snake on the Lower Niger possess similar stones which they vomit up. They are supposed to give a brilliant light, which attracts the snake's prey. Though specific against other poisons, these stones are of no use against snake-bite; they are mainly employed as a charm to attract game by those hunters, who are sufficiently adroit to kill a snake before it has had time to re-swallow the stone.[2]
Major Leonard reports that "the stone is so small or illusory that it has never been found in any of the specimens which have been killed," but although no doubt many of the stones in use are of questionable origin, the phenomenon of "hard and lapideous concretions" actually to be found in the bodies of some snakes may well have contributed to the belief.[3] The Malays obtain calculi of this nature sometimes from snakes, but principally from the red monkey or porcupine, and use them as antidotes to poison or as remedies for various diseases.[4] The stony secretions of the lynx were used in antiquity to cure falling sickness and to alleviate pains in the kidney,[5] and the Byzantine Philes asserts that calculi from the ostrich are an excellent remedy for ophthalmia.[6] To such calculi, which are not in fact of resplendent appearance nor in the least like diamonds, appears to belong the dracontia lapis of Solinus, an authority upon whom the medieval lapidaries drew. It must be cut out of the head of a living snake, for, if the snake dies before it is procured, the stone dissolves. Though much prized by kings of the East, it is of ignoble appearance, does not
- ↑ Hildburgh, Journal of R. Anth. Inst, xxxviii. pp. 188-200. These luminous snake-stones, the method of acquiring which is described, have general magical properties and are also specific against snake-bite.
- ↑ Leonard, The Lower Niger and its Tributaries, p. 192. The stone is described as round and smooth, blue by day and like fire by night.
- ↑ Cf. Sir Thomas Browne on the Toad Stone, Pseudodoxia, iii. cap. xiii.
- ↑ Skeat, Malay Magic, pp. 275, 303-304.
- ↑ Solinus, Collectanea Rerum Mirabilium, ii. 38-39, on the authority of Theophrastus.
- ↑ Philes (ed. Dübner), 150. I have not traced this in Aelian from whom Philes is mainly derived.
