hernia. Ash rods are
used in some parts of England for the cure of diseased sheep, cows, and
horses; and in particular they are supposed to neutralize the venom
of serpents. The notion that snakes are afraid of an ash-tree is not
extinct even in the United States. The other day I was told, not by an
old granny, but by a man fairly educated and endowed with a very unusual
amount of good common-sense, that a rattlesnake will sooner go through
fire than creep over ash leaves or into the shadow of an ash-tree.
Exactly the same statement is made by Piny, who adds that if you draw
a circle with an ash rod around the spot of ground on which a snake
is lying, the animal must die of starvation, being as effectually
imprisoned as Ugolino in the dungeon at Pisa. In Cornwall it is believed
that a blow from an ash stick will instantly kill any serpent. The ash
shares this virtue with the hazel and fern. A Swedish peasant will tell
you that snakes may be deprived of their venom by a touch with a hazel
wand; and when an ancient Greek had occasion to make his bed in the
woods, he selected fern leaves if possible, in the belief that the smell
of them would drive away poisonous animals. [51]

But the beneficent character of the lightning appears still more clearly
in another class of myths. To the primitive man the shaft of light
coming down from heaven was typical of the original descent of fire for
the benefit and improvement of the human race. The Sioux Indians account
for the origin of fire by a myth of unmistakable kinship; they say that
"their first ancestor obtained his fire from the sparks which a friendly
panther struck from the rocks as he scampered up a stony hill." [52]
This panther is obviously the counterpart of the Aryan bird which
drops schamir. But the Aryan imagination hit upon a far more remarkable
conception. The ancient Hindus obtained fire by a process similar to
that employed by Count Rumford in his experiments on the generation of
heat by friction. They first wound a couple of cords around a pointed
stick in such a way that the unwinding of the one would wind up the
other, and then, placing the point of the stick against a circular disk
of wood, twirled it rapidly by alternate pulls on the two strings. This
instrument is called a chark, and is still used in South Africa, [53]
in Australia, in Sumatra, and among the Veddahs of Ceylon. The Russians
found it in Kamtchatka; and it was formerly employed in America, fro