In many different countries, especially in the north of Europe, these flint arrow-heads and the fossil remains of similar form, were called fairy-darts or elf-shots, and were believed to be the enchanted weapons of the elves and fairies, who, in the old folk-lore, are represented as beings of a very different quality from the fairies and elves of the tales of our childhood. In some parts of Europe at the present day, for example in Ireland, the peasantry talk with bated breath of the doings of the “good people,” for they shrink from using the word “fairy” lest it might offend these mysterious and generally malevolent beings. The designation “good people” is therefore used to placate and flatter them. [Illustration: Extracting toad-stone. From Johannis de Cuba’s “Ortus Sanitatis,” Strassburg, 1483. ] Various shell fossils were also used as talismans. Here the form generally determined the virtues they were supposed to possess. Some of these strange forms lent themselves to an interpretation in line with the primitive adoration of the life-giving forces of nature, and suggested the use of such fossils to cure certain special diseases. Other of these petrifactions retaining the form of the enclosing shell, especially those of circular shape, and with concentric rings, were believed to be of meteoric origin and to have fallen during thunder or rain; hence the names of _brontia_ and _ombria_. A certain class of these fossils, with convolutions on the surface resembling the form of a snake, were called snake-eggs (_ova anguina_), and, very naturally, enjoyed the repute of preserving the wearer from poisons. All these varieties will be described in this and the following chapters. While some believed that the toad-stone was vomited by the animal, others held that it constituted a part of the toad’s head. That this was the popular belief in Shakespeare’s time is shown by the well-known lines in his “As You Like It” (Act II, sc. 1): Which like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head. De Boot, whose treatise was published about the time that Shakespeare wrote these lines, gives the following account of the result of his efforts to obtain a toad-stone according to the prescribed method:[325] I remember that, when a boy, I took an old toad and set it upon a red cloth that I might secure a toad-stone; for they say that it will not give up its stone unless it sits upon a red cloth. However, although I watched the toad for a whole night, it did not eject anything, and from this time I became convinced all the tales concerning this stone were merely fond imaginings.