STONES.
In addition to jewels found in animals, superstition made use of stones of various forms, spherical and pointed, plain and ornamented, of unknown origin, but bearing evidence of having been reduced to form by human art. These were carefully preserved in families as heirlooms, and are found in tumuli, graves, and road-cuttings, dredged from rivers, and turned up by the plough. They are undoubted relics of a remote past, and have been referred by antiquaries to a prehistoric age and savages who lived before iron was invented. The ingenuity of those who advocate this view of their origin is sufficiently tested in finding a practical use for the stones as weapons of war or the chase, as employed in games of chance, or as articles of domestic use, corn-crushers, hatchets, or personal ornaments. No doubt many of them were originally intended for such purposes; but the uselessness of others and the absence of fitness for any known or conceivable purpose of utility, indicate a different origin. It is not easy, for instance, to assign any ordinary use to such a stone-ball as that pictured in Wilson’s Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, i., 195, and to many others of still more curious appearance and with more elaborate ornaments. The incised ornaments forbid the idea of their being of ordinary service, and the prevalence of witchcraft, with its armoury of curiously-shaped stones and mysterious natural productions, among all savage tribes, makes it highly probable they were the implements of the prehistoric conjurer’s craft, and were from the first associated with strange virtues. As a lethal weapon the first stone picked up from the ground was as serviceable. They have been associated with the popular superstitions of very modern times. It is not unlikely that from the beginning they were so associated.