"Nymphs who your sister nymphs in glassy thrall Hold here imprisoned in the crystal ball; Waters that were and are, declare the cause That your bright forms at once congeals and thaws. "Scorn not the crystal ball, a worth it owns, Greater than graven Erythrean stones; Rude though it seems, a formless mass of ice, ’Tis justly counted ’mongst our gems of price." And so on through several others, until he comes to that one which seems to indicate something beyond a merely figurative use of the word "nymphs;" though, after all, it is possible that the word was originally written with an _l_, instead of _n_, which would make all the difference between "nymphs" and "waters":— "While the soft boy the slippery crystal turns, To touch the waters in their icy urns, Safe in its depths translucent he beholds The nymphs, unconscious of the winter colds: And the dry ball exploring with his lip, Seems, while he fails, the illusive lymph to sip." The Latin is subjoined:— "Dum crystalla puer contingere lubrica gaudet Et gelidum tenero pollice versat onus, Videt perspicuo deprensas in marmore nymphas, Dura quibus solis parcere novit hyems: Et siccum religens labiis sitientibus orbem, Irrita quæsitis oscula figit aquis." Not the least remarkable of the qualities here ascribed to the crystal ball is its energy in imparting the sensation of cold. Dom Chifflet, who, in 1665, published his learned treatise at Antwerp on the objects then recently discovered in the supposed tomb of King Childeric, at Tournay, says of the crystal ball which was found amongst them, "You would say it was petrified ice; so cold it was, that my palm and fingers, after handling it, were quite torpid." And cites Anslem Boetius, in his book on stones and gems, as saying, "the crystal is of so cold and dry a nature, that placed beneath the tongue of a feverish person, it allays the thirst; and held in the hands even of those violently fevered, it refreshes and cools them, especially if it be of considerable size, and of a spherical figure;" and another writer on the same subject, Andreas Cisalpinus, who states of the marble called ophite, that "they make of it little globes, for the handling of such as are in burning fever, the coldness of the stone expelling the disease." So far Dom Chifflet. It seems almost as if we were reading Reichenbach. "He (Reichenbach) found that crystals are capable of producing all the phenomena resulting from the action of a magnet on cataleptic patients. Thus, for instance, a large piece of rock crystal, placed in the hand of a nervous patient, affects the fingers so as to make them grasp the crystal involuntarily, and shut the fist. Reichenbach found that more than half of all the persons he tried were sensible of its action." Chifflet probably was a man of a nervous temperament. Those who desire to see the crystal ball in question, may inspect it, where it is still preserved, with other objects found in the