192 THE MAGIC OF JEWELS AND CHARMS
Certain echinites (fossil sea-urchins) found on the Baltic coast are called by the peasants Adlersteine and Krallensteine ("eagle-stones"
and "claw-stones"), since they believe that while the substance was
soft eagles had seized them with their talons, thus producing the
peculiar forms and markings. Whoever had a fossil of this description
on his table while a thunder-storm was raging ran no risk of being
struck by lightning.75
Reich
describes another variety of echinite, which was popularly known as a
"toad-stone," the specimen he figures having been given him by a
certain Johannis Krauss. In this appeared some large cavities, whose
presence Beich found it very difficult to explain, until Krauss
informed him that they had been made by a former owner of the fossil
who had scraped out a few grains of the substance each year for
medicinal use. He was persuaded that his long life—he attained the age
of eighty—was entirely owing to his employment of this remedy.76
The trochites and entrochus, named
Räderstein, or "wheel-stone," by the Germans, are other fossils to
which remedial or talismanic virtue was accorded in popular fancy.
These "wheel-stones," while detachable, fitted as closely together in
the original formation as though they had been skilfully adjusted by a
clever artisan.77 De Laet states that when immersed in oil
they gave forth bubbles and moved about spontaneously. Still another of
these fossils believed to be amulets was the enastros, which De Boot terms the asteria vera, or genuine asteria, since it not merely showed a star-shaped marking as did the fossil coral bearing the name
" Andrée, " Ethnographische Parallelen und Vergleiche," 'New Ser., Leipzig, 1889, p. 33.
"Reichii, "Medicina Universalis" [Vratislaviœ, 1691], p. 76. See Fig. 4, opp. p. 72.
"
De Boot, " Gemmarum et lapidum historia," ed. Toll, Lug. Bat., 1647, p.
410; lib. li, cap. ccxxvii, and also De Laet, "De gemmis et lapidibus,"
Lug. Bat, 1647, p. 138.
