Note 275 — Chapter V · Magic Rites connected with the Several Departments of Nature (continued 2)

I was once asked $200 for a small stone which its owner kept in cotton-wool in a small tin box, where it lay surrounded by grains of rice, upon which he declared that it fed.275 I asked him how it could be proved that it was a true Bezoar stone (which it undoubtedly was not), and he declared that if it were placed upon an inverted tumbler and touched with the point of a k’ris (dagger) or a lime-fruit it would commence to move about. Both tests were therefore applied in my presence, but the motion of the Bezoar stone in each case proved to be due to the most overt trickery on the part of the owner, who by pressing on one side of the stone (which was spherical in shape) naturally caused it to move; in fact I was easily able to produce the same effect in the same way, as I presently showed him, though of course he could not be brought to admit the deception.276