Scatalogic Rites of All Nations / A dissertation upon the employment of excrementitious remedial agents in religion, therapeutics, divination, witchcraft, love-philters, etc., in all parts of the globe

by John Gregory Bourke

AS AN ARTICLE OF JEWELRY.

Fossilized excrement is used in the manufacture of jewelry, under the name of “Coprolite.”

Lapland women carry a little case made from the bark of the birch tree, “which they usually carry under the girdle” in which is to be found reindeer dung, not as an amulet but to aid in weaning the young reindeer by smearing the udders of the dams.—(See Leems’ “Account of Danish Lapland,” in Pinkerton, vol. i. p. 405.)

But, from other sources, we have learned that the Laps attached the most potent influences to ordure and urine believing that their reindeer could be bewitched, that vessels could be hastened or retarded in their course, etc., by the use of such materials. Several examples of this belief are given in this volume; see under “Witchcraft.”