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218 THE MAGIC OF JEWELS AND CHARMS
price.
These were greasy and soapy, both to the eye and to the touch, and of a
greenish or yellowish color; a few were reddish or blackish. They were
so highly valued in Holland that a Jew in Amsterdam asked 6000 livres
($1200) for a 'specimen in his possession as large as a pigeon's egg; and
such bezoars were even rented in Holland and Portugal, at the rate of
one ducat ($2.50) a day, to those who were exposed to contagion, and
believed that the bezoars, if worn as amulets, would protect them from
the danger.31
In a letter to the Macon, Georgia, Journal and Messenger of
August, 1854, Major J. D. Wilkes, of Dooley County, relates that while
hunting he shot down a fine buck. He states that on cutting up the
animal he found a stone of a dark greenish color, about where the
windpipe joins the lights. It was from an inch and a half to two inches
long, and quite heavy for its size, although it appeared to be porous.
Major Wilkes says that he had heard of similar stones from old hunters,
and had been told that they possessed the power of extracting poison,
but that they were rarely found. The communication proceeds to relate a
case where this stone was successfully applied to a dog which had been
bitten by a rattlesnake. We have here one of the few notices extant
regarding an American bezoar stone.82
An
American bezoar taken from the stomach of a deer killed in the
Chilhowee Mountains, in Tennessee, was reported in 1866 by Prof. David
Christy. In extracting this concretion the hunter had damaged the outer
layer, but when this was removed there remained a perfectly smooth,
round body, about the size and shape of a hen's egg, and of a light brown color. When Professor Christy obtained it,
u Valmont de Romare, " Dictionnaire raisonné universel," Paris, 1775, p. 556.
β Edwarde, " History and Poetry oi Finger Rings," New York, 1855, pp. 110, 111.
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