It must not, however, be supposed that popular superstition yielded at once to the decisions of science, and it is curious to meet with the same ideas in the most different climates, and in districts widely separated from each other:18 Everywhere worked flints are attributed to a supernatural origin; everywhere they are looked upon as amulets with the power of protecting their owner, his house or his flocks. Russian peasants believe them to be the arrows of thunder, and fathers transmit them to their children as precious heirlooms. The same belief is held in France, Ireland, and Scotland, in Scandinavia, and Hungary, as well as in Asia Minor, in Japan, China, and Burn lap; in Java, and amongst the people of the Bahama Islands, as amongst the negroes of the Soudan or those of the west coast of Africa,19 who look upon these stones as bolts launched from Heaven by Sango, the god of thunder; amongst the ancient inhabitants of Nicaragua as well as the Malays, who, however, still make similar implements. The name given to these flints recalls the origin attributed to them. The Romans call them _ceraunia_ from κεραυνός, thunder, and in the catalogue of the possessions of a noble Veronese published in 1656, we find them mentioned under this name.20 Every one knows Cymbeline’s funeral chant in Shakespeare’s play: Fear no more the lightning flash Nor the all dreaded thunder-stone. In Germany we are shown _Donner-Keile_, in Alsace _Dormer-Axt_, in Holland _Donner-Beitels_, in Denmark _Tordensteen_, in Norway _Tordenkeile_, in Sweden _Thorsoggar_, Thor having been the god of thunder amongst northern nations; while with the Celts21 the _Mengurun_, in Asia Minor the _Ylderim-tachi_, in Japan the _Rai-fu-seki-no-rui_, in Roussillon the _Pedrus de Lamp_, and in Andalusia the _Piedras de Rayo_ have the same signification. The inhabitants of the Mindanao islands call these stones the teeth of the thunder animal, and the Japanese the teeth of the thunder.22 In Cambodia, worked stones, celts, adzes, and gouges or knives, are known as thunder stones. A Chinese emperor, who lived in the eighth century of our era, received from a Buddhist priest some valuable presents which the donors said had been sent by the Lord of Heaven, amongst which were two flint hatchets called _loui-kong_, or stones of the god of thunder. In Brazil we meet with the same idea in the name of _corsico_, or lightnings, given to worked flints; whilst in Italy, by all exception almost unique, they are called _lingue san Paolo_.