Germany and not extinct in England," that every suicide by
hanging is followed by a storm.

[46] In accordance with the mediaeval "doctrine of
signatures," it was maintained "that the hard, stony seeds of
the Gromwell must be good for gravel, and the knotty tubers of
scrophularia for scrofulous glands; while the scaly pappus of
scaliosa showed it to be a specific in leprous diseases, the
spotted leaves of pulmonaria that it was a sovereign remedy
for tuberculous lungs, and the growth of saxifrage in the
fissures of rocks that it would disintegrate stone in the
bladder." Prior, Popular Names of British Plants, Introd., p.
xiv. See also Chapiel, La Doctrine des Signatures. Paris,
1866.

[47] Indeed, the wish-bone, or forked clavicle of a fowl,
itself belongs to the same family of talismans as the
divining-rod.

[48] The ash, on the other hand, has been from time immemorial
used for spears in many parts of the Aryan domain. The word
oesc meant, in Anglo-Saxon, indifferently "ash-tree," or
"spear"; and the same is, or has been, true of the French
fresne and the Greek melia. The root of oesc appears in the
Sanskrit as, "to throw" or "lance," whence asa, "a bow," and
asana, "an arrow." See Pictet, Origines Indo-Europeennes, I.
222.

The paths of comparative mythology are devious, but we have
now pursued them long enough I believe, to have arrived at a