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162 THE MAGIC OP JEWELS AND CHARMS
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selves
to an interpretation in line with the primitive adoration of the
life-giving forces of nature, and suggested the use of such fossils to
cure certain special diseases. Other of these petrifactions retaining
the form of the enclosing shell, especially those of circular shape,
and with concentric rings, were believed to be of meteoric origin and
to have fallen during thunder or rain; hence the names of brontia and
ombria. A certain class of these fossils, with convolutions on the surface resembling the form of a snake, were called snake-eggs Uova anguina), and,
very naturally, enjoyed the repute of preserving the wearer from
poisons. All these varieties will be described in this and the
following chapters.
While
some believed at the toad-stone was vomited by the animal, others
held that it constituted a part of the toad's head. That this was the
popular belief in Shakespeare's time is shown by the well-known lines
in his "As You Like It" (Act II, sc. 1) : Which like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
De
Boot, whose treatise was published about the time that Shakespeare
wrote these lines, gives the following account of the result of his
efforts to obtain a toad-stone according to the prescribed method :2
I
remember that, when a boy, I took an old toad and set it upon a red cloth that I might secure a toadstone; for they say that it will not
give up its stone unless it sits upon a red cloth. However, although I
watched the' Anselmi Boetii de Boodt, " Gemmarum Historia," Honoviae, 1009, p. 52.
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