" METHRATTON."
[To TEE EDITOR OF TEE SPECTATOR."1 SIR,—You will, perhaps, allow me to confirm what was said in your article under the above heading regarding the survival in our midst of much superstition. I am at present correcting the sheets of a small book shortly to be published by the Folk-lore Society, under the title of "Folk-Medicine," and while engaged in collecting and approximately classifying various charms relative to the prevention or cure of disease, I have come across not one, but very many instances of superstition, which still exercise great influence upon the life and thought of the people. It is cer- tainly true, as you say, that although true education kills magic, "what is called education" does not. How otherwise are we to account for such an evidently modern superstition as this,— that it is unlucky to keep black-edged note-paper in a house. The writer of your paper testifies to positive faith among fairly edu- cated persons still existing in astrology, fortune-telling, and palm- istry, and I can add to this that I know a man of very consider- able means who makes no secret of his carrying an exceedingly primitive amulet against rheumatism ; that I heard from a farmer, whose politics are of the most advanced description, of a recent case of witchery in Lanarkshire; and that charming for toothache and the mysterious tooth-" worm" is scarcely yet an extinct business. When we regard the widely varying civi- lisation in our islands, viz., in London and in the caves of Wick Bay, how can we wonder at the difference of thought and reasoning which exist together ? The latter is, in my opinion, less wonderful than the former.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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