by contact with the ground.[43] Another of his cures for the same malady
is a wreath of fleabane placed on the head, but it must not touch the
earth.[44] On the same condition a decoction of the root of elecampane
in wine kills worms; a fern, found growing on a tree, relieves the
stomach-ache; and the pastern-bone of a hare is an infallible remedy for
colic, provided, first, it be found in the dung of a wolf, second, that
it docs not touch the ground, and, third, that it is not touched by a
woman.[45] Another cure for colic is effected by certain hocus-pocus
with a scrap of wool from the forehead of a first-born lamb, if only the
lamb, instead of being allowed to fall to the ground, has been caught by
hand as it dropped from its dam.[46] In Andjra, a district of Morocco,
the people attribute many magical virtues to rain-water which has fallen
on the twenty-seventh day of April, Old Style; accordingly they collect
it and use it for a variety of purposes. Mixed with tar and sprinkled on
the door-posts it prevents snakes and scorpions from entering the house:
sprinkled on heaps of threshed corn it protects them from the evil eye:
mixed with an egg, henna, and seeds of cress it is an invaluable
medicine for sick cows: poured over a plate, on which a passage of the
Koran has been written, it strengthens the memory of schoolboys who
drink it; and if you mix it with cowdung and red earth and paint rings
with the mixture round the trunks of your fig-trees at sunset on
Midsummer Day, you may depend on it that the trees will bear an
excellent crop and will not shed their fruit untimely on the ground. But
in order to preserve these remarkable properties it is absolutely
essential that the water should on no account be allowed to touch the
ground; some say too that it should not be exposed to the sun nor
breathed upon by anybody.[47] Again, the Moors ascribe great magical
efficacy to what they call "the sultan of the oleander," which is a
stalk of oleander with a cluster of four pairs of leaves springing from
it. They think that the magical virtue is greatest if the stalk has been