The gypsies believe that the Earth-spirits are specially interested in animals. They also teach women the secrets of medicine and sorcery. There are indications of this in the negro magic. Miss Mary Owen, an accomplished Folk-lorist of St. Joseph, Missouri, who has been deeply instructed in Voodooism, informs me that a woman to become a witch must go by night into a field and pull up a weed by the roots. From the quantity of soil which clings to it, is inferred the degree of magic power which the pupil will attain. I am not astonished to learn that when this lady was initiated, the amount of earth collected was unusually great. In such cases the Pchuvus (or Poovus in English gypsy), indicate their good-will by bestowing "earth," which, from meaning luck or good-fortune, has passed in popular parlance to signifying money. CHAPTER VI. OF PREGNANCY AND CHARMS, OR FOLK-LORE CONNECTED WITH IT--BOARS' TEETH AND CHARMS FOR PREVENTING THE FLOW OF BLOOD. Like all Orientals the gypsy desires intensely to have a family. Superstition comes in to increase the wish, for a barren woman in Eastern Europe is generally suspected of having had intercourse with a vampire or spirit before her marriage, and she who has done this, willingly or unconsciously, never has children. They have recourse to many magic medicines or means to promote conception; one of the most harmless in Hungary is to eat grass from the grave in which a woman with child has been buried. While doing this the woman repeats:-- "Dui riká hin mire minc, Dui yará hin leskro kor, Avnás dui yek jelo, Keren ákána yek jeles." Or else the woman drinks the water in which the husband has cast hot coals, or, better still, has spit, saying:-- "Káy me yákh som Ac tu ángár, Káy me brishind som, Ac tu pani!" "Where I am flame Be thou the coals! Where I am rain Be thou the water!" Or at times the husband takes an egg, makes a small hole at each end, and then blows the yolk and white into the mouth of his wife who swallows them. There are innumerable ways and means to ensure pregnancy, some of which are very dangerous. Faith in the so-called "artificial propagation" is extensively spread. "Will der Zigeuner einen Sohn erzielen, so gürtet er sich mit dem Halfterzaume eines männlichen Pferdes und umgekehrt mit dem einer Stute, will er eine Tochter erzeugen." ("Gebräuche d. Trans. Zig." Dr. H. von Wlislocki. "Ill. Zeitschrift. Band," 51. No. 16.) If a gypsy woman in Transylvania wishes to know whether she be with child, she must stand for nine evenings at a cross-road with an axe or hammer, which she must wet with her own water, and then bury there. Should it be dug up on the ninth morning after, and found rusty, it is a sign that she is "in blessed circumstances."