him by name, whom they had a mind to cheer and consult, and desired him to draw near.[9] The questions made by the living were very intelligible; but the answers of the dead were not so easily understood; the priests, therefore, and the magicians made it their business to explain them. They retired into deep caves, where the darkness and silence resembled the state of death, and there fasted, and lay upon the skins of the beasts they had sacrificed, and then gave for answer the dreams which most affected them; or opened a certain book appointed for that purpose, and gave the first sentence that offered.[10] At other times the priest, or any person who came to consult, took care at his going out of the cave, to listen to the first words he should hear, and these were to be his answer. And though they had not the most remote relation to the mutter in question, they were twisted so many ways, and their sense so violently wrested, that they made them signify almost anything they pleased. At other times they had recourse to a number of tickets, on which were some words or verses, and these being thrown into an urn, the first that was taken out was delivered to the family.[11] Health, prosperity in worldly affairs, and all that was intermixed in the good or evil of this world were regulated by the responses or signs which these equivocal, not to say less than absurd, means afforded, of prying into the womb of future events. AUGURY, OR DIVINATIONS DRAWN FROM THE FLIGHT AND FEEDING OP BIRDS. The superstitious fondness of mankind for searching into futurity has given rise to an infinite variety of extravagant follies. The Romans, who were remarkably fertile in these sorts of demonological inventions, suggested numerous ways of divination. With them all Nature had a voice, and the most senseless beings, and most trivial things, the most trifling incidents, became presages of future events; which introduced ceremonies founded on a mistaken knowledge of antiquity, the most childish and ridiculous, and which were performed with all the air of solemnity and sanctity of devotion. Augury, or divinations founded on the flight of birds, were not only considered by the Egyptians as the symbols of the winds, but good and bad omens of every kind were founded or rather derived from the flying of the feathered tribe. The birds at this time had become wonderfully wise; and an owl, to whom, for reasons not precisely known, light is not so agreeable as darkness, could not pass by the windows of a sick person in the night, where the creature was not offended by the glimmerings of a light or candle, but his hooting must be considered as prophesying, that the life of the poor man was nearly wound up.