may militate against the absolute necessity of some of them, still it would
be hardly fair to pronounce them added by the hand of superstition till
proof positive can be obtained.

We might argue on the subject, and by bringing forward instances of Indian
superstition draw our conclusion by inference, and still remain in doubt on
this head. You know superstition to be the offspring of ignorance, and of
course that it takes up its abode amongst the rudest tribes of uncivilised
man. It even too often resides with man in his more enlightened state.

The Augustan age furnishes numerous examples. A bone snatched from the jaws
of a fasting bitch, and a feather from the wing of a night-owl--"ossa ab
ore rapta jejunae canis, plumamque nocturnae strigis"--were necessary for
Canidia's incantations. And in after-times Parson Evans, the Welshman, was
treated most ungenteelly by an enraged spirit solely because he had
forgotten a fumigation in his witch-work.

If, then, enlightened man lets his better sense give way, and believes, or
allows himself to be persuaded, that certain substances and actions, in
reality of no avail, possess a virtue which renders them useful in
producing the wished-for effect, may not the wild, untaught, unenlightened
savage of Guiana add an ingredient which, on account of the harm it does
him, he fancies may be useful to the perfection of his poison, though in
fact it be of no use at all? If a bone snatched from the jaws of a fasting
bitch be thought necessary in incantation; or if witchcraft have recourse
to the raiment of the owl because it resorts to the tombs and mausoleums of
the dead and wails and hovers about at the time that the rest of animated
nature sleeps; certainly the savage may imagine that the ants, whose sting
causes a fever, and the teeth of the labarri and counacouchi snakes, which
convey death in a very short space of time, are essentially necessary in