170 THE MAGIC OF JEWELS AND CHAEMS
graves, it has often been associated with necromancy and with evil spirits.
The lacrima cervi, or
"stag's tear," is not to be confounded with the bezoar stone according
to Scaliger, who maintains that it was a bony concretion that formed in
the corner of a stag's eye only after the animal had passed its
hundredth year ; as the stag never attains this age he might as well
have said that the existence of this "tear" was a fable. However, he
describes it as though he had carefully inspected a specimen, saying
that it was so smooth and light that it would almost slip through the
fingers of anyone who held it in his hand. It had similar powers to
those of the bezoar, being a powerful antidote to poisons and a cure
for the plague if powdered and given with wine ; these good effects
resulting from the excessively profuse perspiration that followed the
administration of the dose.24
These
fabled stag's tears, though often praised as substitutes for the
bezoar, were not believed in by all the early writers, one of them,
Rollenhagen, giving expression to a caustic opinion that might do
credit to a writer of our own day. Alluding to the many reports of the
existence of such "tears," shed by the animals because of the pains
they suffered after indulging in a diet of serpents, he notes that all
those who make these statements are careful to place the habitat of
these eccentric stags as far away from their own land as possible,
always "somewhere in the Orient," probably at "Nowheretown," as he
adds.25
The chelonia is
said by Pliny to have been the eye of the Indian tortoise. The
magicians asserted that this was the most marvellous of all "stones";
for if bathed in honey and then placed in the mouth, when the moon was
either full
*
Danielle Sennarti, " Epitome naturalis scientiœ," Francofurti, 1650,
lib. ν, cap. 4, pp. 438, 439; citing Scaliger, Exercit. 112.
β G. Rollenhagen, " Wahrhaffte Lügen von Geistlichen und Natürlichen Dingen," Wahrenberg, 1680, p. 93.
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