possessor causes misfortune to himself or to his family. It is his fate, he cannot help it. He is a jettatore. In Theophile Gautier's romance, Jettatura, the jettatore ruins everyone he cares for, and finally plucks out his own eyes. Alexandre Dumas in his Le Curricolo, mostly about Naples, has a chapter on la jettatura.

This idea is another form of the Eastern idea of unlucky men; in the Arabian Nights we have instances of this.

Such is the Evil Eye and the beliefs associated with it. As the bane was believed to exist, so the antidote was accordingly found. Hence the firm adherence to amulets to ward off the Evil Eye. Apart from a ritual of gestures and signs, there were actual ornaments worn as amulets. The Neapolitan hangs horns, crescents, hands, and other objects on his watch-chain. An Armenian girl, when conversing with the writer, was toying with a dirty piece of bone which after enquiry turned out to be a human toe bone, as a charm against the supposed Evil Eye. In the Claddagh, near Galway, a woman snatched up her child and hid her from the gaze of a companion of the writer. Tea was offered to the writer, but the supposed possessor of the Evil Eye was refused admittance.

An amulet is usually some slight work of art; it attracts the Evil Eye to itself, and acts as a non-conductor or repellent. Eyes painted on early ships, or eyes of porcelain, are related to the same belief. Crescents made of boar tusks are

ornaments of horses in Turkey and the East. In the illustration of a Hindustanee playing card (p. 185), this crescent is clearly shown as an ornament above the horse's head. In Southern Europe two brazen flags swing over the horse's back or a small swinging disc as a crest ornament in crescent-shaped frame. These debased symbols of horns and crescents suggest the Babylonian disc, the flaming weapon of the god Merodach, the disc and horns on the head of Isis.

The Spinning-Wheel.-The evolution of the spinning-wheel and a comparison of the various types used in different countries covers a wide area both in regard to time and place. The spindle and distaff were the precursors of the wheel. The distaff was a rod from which the flax was drawn when spinning. The spindle was a stick some twelve inches long with a notch at one end and having a "whorl," a circular stone or bone through which the spindle was thrust. This enabled it to be whirled between the fingers and thumbthe earliest and most primitive method of spinning. It has been employed to spin goat's hair or sheep's wool, or vegetable fibres such as flax, or cotton, or hemp.

For the particulars embodied therein concerning spinningwheels the writer is indebted to the Catalogue of the Horner Collection of Spinning-Wheels and Accessories, exhibited at the Belfast Municipal Art Gallery and Museum. This unique collection was made by Mr. John Horner of Belfast, and presented by him to the Belfast Museum, the donor having made a special study of spinning-wheels.

DUTCH WOMAN AT SPINNING WHEEL.
From an old print after painting by Caspar Netscher.

This is real hand-spinning. The next stage was the invention of a wheel to turn the spindle mechanically by means of a handle. A later device was the addition of a treadle so that the hands were released. Further additions additions were the use of two or more spindles, some Russian examples have four. In regard to both of these stages of invention-the use of the wheel, and the amplification of the wheel by the treadle-the peasant women of certain countries have refused to adopt them. To-day the Italian woman, particularly of Southern Italy, prefers to use the old method, presumably because it enables her to carry on her spinning where she likes without being encumbered by a wheel. In Lombardy, Piedmont, and Tuscany, wheel-spinning is carried on side by side with this older form.

The Eastern type of wheel has its framework resting on the ground, as the spinner sits in oriental fashion cross-legged. But the Chinese wheel in common use has a treadle used by a second operator, and there are three spindles.

European examples, whether with treadle action or not, are raised from the ground as the spinner sat at her work or sometimes stood. The picture by Caspar Netscher, who died at the Hague in 1684, represents a Dutch peasant woman spinning. This shows her seated and using the treadle. The flax is seen being guided by her left hand from the distaff to be twisted on the whirling spindle