chief
interest centred in the images or figures traced by nature upon the
stone. These showed what seemed to be two forms, one of a cowled monk,
and the other that of a tall, beardless man; there was also a third,
showing an undefined form. On the under side of this callimus was marked the outline of a crescent moon.36
A
seventeenth-century writer, not otherwise uncritical, does not
hesitate to declare that he had himself witnessed, in the case of a
fig-tree, an instance of the special power exercised by the œtites. One
of these stones having been attached to this tree, all the fruit
dropped off in the space of ten hours, although the tree had apparently
lost nothing of its vigor, its foliage remaining as luxuriant as before.37
An old treatise on the œtites gives the following names as applied to it in various languages :38
Italian : Aquilina, pietra d'aquila, pietra aquilina, ethite.
French: Pierre de l'aigle.
Spanish : Piedra de l'aguila.
Polish : Orlovi Kamyen.
Swedish : Oernarsteen.
English : Eagle-stome.
German : Adlerstein.
Flemish : Adelersteen, arensteen.
Arabic: Hager achtamach.
" Conradi Gesneri, " De figuris lapidum," Tiguri, 1565, pp. 142, 143 ; with figures of ring. Pliny already mentions the callimus, " Naturalis historia," lib. xxxvi, cap. 39.
" Bauschii, " De lapide œtite," Lipsiae, 1665, p. 64.
"Ibid., p. 9.
