The German belief is much the same as the Irish. Stone celts are held to preserve from lightning the house in which they are kept. They perspire when a storm is approaching; they are good for diseases of man and beast; they increase the milk of cows; they assist the birth of children; and powder scraped from them may be taken with advantage for various childish disorders. It is usually nine days after their fall before they are found on the surface. In the ruins of a Cistercian nunnery, Martha’s Hof, at Bonn,[212] a large polished celt of jadeite, like Fig. 52, was found, which had been presumably brought there as a protection against lightning. It had been placed in the roof of a granary. In Bavaria[213] and Moravia[214] stone axes, whether perforated or not, are regarded as thunderbolts. In Holland,[215] in like manner, they are known as _donder-beitels_, or thunder-chisels. In Spain they are known as _rayos_ or _centellos_, and are regarded as thunder-stones, while among the Portuguese[216] |59| and in Brazil[217] the name for a stone axe-blade is _corisco_, or lightning. In Italy[218] a similar belief that these stone implements are thunderbolts prevails, and Moscardo[219] has figured two polished celts as _Saette o Fulmini_; and in Greece[220] the stone celts are known as _Astropelekia_, and have long been held in veneration. About the year 1081 we find the Byzantine emperor, Alexius Comnenus,[221] sending, among other presents, to the Emperor Henry III. of Germany, ἀστροπέλεκυν δεδεμένον μετὰ χρυσαφίου, an expression which appears to have puzzled Ducange and Gibbon, but which probably means a celt of meteoric origin mounted in gold. About 1670[222] a stone hatchet was brought from Turkey by the French Ambassador, and presented to Prince François de Lorraine, bishop of Verdun. It still exists in the Musée Lorrain at Nancy. Nor is the belief in the meteoric and supernatural origin of celts confined to Europe. Throughout a great part of Asia the same name of thunderbolts or lightning-stones is applied to them. Dr. Tylor[223] cites an interesting passage from a Chinese encyclopædia of the seventeenth century respecting lightning-stones, some of which have the shape of a hatchet. In Japan[224] they are known as thunderbolts, or as the battle-axe of Tengu,[225] the Guardian of Heaven. They are there of great use[226] medicinally; in Java[227] they are known as lightning-teeth. The old naturalist Rumph,[228] towards the end of the seventeenth century, met with many such in Java and Amboyna, which he says were known as “Dondersteenen.”