Note 44 — V.—CHARMS, SPELLS, AMULETS AND DIVINATIONS.

Chiromancy or Divination by Palmistry has its votaries in China as in Europe, the predictions of our English gypsies being arrived at in very nearly the same way. The lines in the palm of the hand known as the “line of life or longevity,” “line of fortune,” “line of the stomach,” bear similar names in the vocabulary of native chiromancers, the same line both in China and England being referred to as that of longevity. A native account says: “The lines indicate whether a man be spendthrift or the reverse; whether he will be lucky, wealthy, and prosperous, or attain high position; whether he will have children, their sex, and whether or not they will survive; and finally whether he will have more than one wife.” The skin peeling from the palm of the hand (a common occurrence when a person unused to manual labour performs work which abrades or blisters the palms) is looked upon as an unlucky omen. The evil omen attached to white specks on the finger nails has been already noticed; but there does not appear to exist any practice of divination by this means such as was formerly practised in England under the name of Onychomancy or Onymancy.44 Physiognomy is however much believed in by the Chinese, and auguries from the countenance—a form of divination which we all more or less unconsciously adopt, as witness such phrases as “he looks born to be hanged,” &c.—are frequently drawn and believed in. The Chinese have a quaint way of dividing off the facial ages. At 30 years a man is said to have arrived at the epoch of the eyebrows; at 36 at that of the eyes, and so on, at the epoch of the nose, lips, cheek, bone, chin, &c.