[574] One of these shells is exhibited in the Anthropological Museum at Berlin, with a label explaining its use. I do not know to what species it belongs. It appeared to me to be of a sort which may often be seen on mantelpieces in England.
[575] M. J. van Baarda, op. cit. p. 468.
[576] The king was Iphiclus; the wise man was Melampus. See Apollodorus, i. 9. 12; Eustathius on Homer, Od. xi. 292; Schol. on Theocritus, iii. 43. The way in which the king’s impotence was caused by the knife is clearly indicated by the scholiast, on Theocritus: συνέβη ἐπενεγκεῖν αὐτὴν [scil. τὴν μάχαιραν] τοῖς μορίοις τοῦ παιδός. In this scholium we must correct ἐκτέμνοντι . . . δένδρον into ἐκτέμνοντι . . . ζῷα. Eustathius (l.c.) quotes the scholium in this latter form. The animals were rams, according to Apollodorus.
[577] A. C. Kruijt, “Het ijzer in Midden-Celebes,” Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, liii. (1901) pp. 157 sq., 159.
[578] A. W. Nieuwenhuis, Quer durch Borneo, ii. (Leyden, 1907) p. 173.
[579] Grihya-Sûtras, translated by H. Oldenberg, part ii. p. 146.
[580] Grihya-Sûtras, translated by H. Oldenberg, part i. pp. 168, 282 sq., part ii. p. 188 (Sacred Books of the East, vols. xxix. and xxx.). Compare Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes Orientales (Paris, 1782), ii. 81; E. Thurston, Ethnographic Notes in Southern India (Madras, 1906), p. 1. So among the Kookies of Northern Cachar in India the young couple at marriage place each a foot on a large stone in the middle of the village. See Lieut. R. Stewart, “Notes on Northern Cachar,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, xxiv. (1855) pp. 620 sq. In the old ruined church of Balquhidder in Perthshire there is an ancient gravestone on which people used to stand barefoot at marriages and baptisms. See The Folk-lore Journal, vi. (1888) p. 271.
[581] Father Abinal, “Astrologie Malgache,” Missions Catholiques, xi. (1879) p. 482.
[582] The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus, translated by O. Elton (London, 1894), p. 16. The original runs thus: Lecturi regem veteres affixis humo saxis insistere suffragiaque promere consueverant, subjectorum lapidum firmitate facti constantiam ominaturi (Historia Danica, lib. i. p. 22, ed. P. E. Müller).
[583] Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 7 and 55; Plutarch, Solon, 25; Pollux, viii. 86.