canons attends to give the holy unction, with the oil of St. Cosmo; which is prepared by the same receipt as that of the Roman Ritual, with the addition only of the prayer of the Holy Martyrs, St. Cosmus and Damianus. Those who have an infirmity in any of their members present themselves at the great altar, and uncover the member affected (not even excepting that which is most frequently represented by the _ex-voti_); and the reverend canon anoints it, saying, _Per intercessionem beati Cosmi, liberet te ab omni malo, Amen_. The ceremony finishes by the canons of the church dividing the spoils, both money and wax, which must be to a very considerable amount, as the concourse at this fête is said to be prodigiously numerous.” At the present day phallic symbolism is perpetuated in our church steeples, in the crosses and circles on our altars and prayer-books, in the pictures of the lamb holding a cross within a circle on our church windows, in the cross-buns eaten at the paschal feast, in the Easter eggs, and in various other ways; while the Pyramids of Egypt and the Luxor obelisks—one in London, one in Paris, and one in St. Petersburg—form a connecting phallic link between the ancient Egyptians and ourselves. The sphynx has been said by some to be a phallic figure; but I do not subscribe to this view at all, holding the opinion that it is simply a union of two zodiacal signs, July and August of the fixed zodiac. It appears to me that at a very remote time, when the sign _Virgo_ was about to be supplanted at the vernal equinox by the next sign, _Leo_—somewhere about fifteen thousand years ago, or rather later—the priests or astrologers hit upon the idea of placing the head of _Virgo_ upon the shoulders of _Leo_, thus manufacturing a new kind of figure, which, on account of its partaking of the dual nature of the then most prominent of the gods, became very popular, and was depicted in various forms and in many parts of the country. This may also have been the _modus faciendi_ of _Capricornus_ and _Sagittarius_, if we can imagine a still earlier period when the zodiac was so different from the present form as to have signs represented by a fish, a goat, a horse, and an archer respectively.