"I may mention that there were various forms to be observed by those who wished to benefit by its healing powers. The person who came for it to Ardvoirloch was obliged to draw the water himself, and bring it into the house in some vessel into which this stone was to be dipped. A bottle was filled and carried away; and in its conveyance home, if carried into any house by the way, the virtue was supposed to leave the water; it was therefore necessary, if a visit had to be paid, that the bottle should be left outside." Other charm-stones enjoyed, up to the present century, no small medical reputation among the inhabitants of the Highlands. In some districts, every ancient family of note appears to have affected the possession of a curing-stone. The Campbells of Glenlyon have long been the hereditary proprietors of a charm-stone similar to those that I have already mentioned. It consists of a roundish or ovoidal ball, apparently of rock-crystal, about an inch and a half in diameter, and protected by a silver mounting. To make the water in which it was dipped sufficiently medicinal and effective, the stone, during the process, required to be held in the hand of the Laird. The Bairds of Auchmeddan possessed another of these celebrated northern amulets. The Auchmeddan Stone is a ball of black-coloured flint, mounted with four strips of silver. A legend engraved on this silver setting--in letters probably of the last century--states that this "Amulet or charm belonged to the family of Baird of Auchmeddan from the year 1174." In the middle of the last century, this amulet passed as a family relic to the Frasers of Findrack, when an intermarriage with the Bairds occurred. Curing-stones seem to have formerly been by no means rare in this country, to the south also of the Highland Borders. In a letter written by the distinguished Welsh archaeologist Edward Lhwyd, and dated Linlithgow, December 17, 1699, he states that betwixt Wales and the Highlands he had seen at least fifty different forms of the party-coloured glass bead or amulet known under the name of Adder-beads or Snake stones.[226] In Scotland he found various materials used as healing amulets, particularly some pebbles of remarkable shape and colour, and hollow balls and rings of coloured glass. "They have also," he says, "the _Ombriae pellucidae_, which are crystal balls or hemispheres, or depressed ovals, in great esteem for curing of cattle; and some on May-day put them into a tub of water, and besprinkle all their cattle with that water, to prevent being elf-struck, bewitched, etc." In the Lowlands, the curing-stone of greatest celebrity, and the one which has longest retained its repute, is _The Lee Penny._