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In Brunswick people think that if a menstruous woman assists at the killing of a pig, the pork will putrefy. In the Greek island of Calymnos a woman at such times may not go to the well to draw water, nor cross a running stream, nor enter the sea. Her presence in a boat is said to raise storms.

In Lesbos the fires on St. John's Eve are usually lighted by threes, and the people spring thrice over them, each with a stone on his head, saying, "I jump the hare's fire, my head a stone!" In Calymnos the midsummer fire is supposed to ensure abundance in the coming year as well as deliverance from fleas.

There is every reason to believe that the sponge-fisheries of the Ægean are at present conducted precisely in the same manner as they were in the time of Aristotle. The sponge-divers are mostly inhabitants of the islands which lie off the Carian coast, and of those situated between Rhodes and Calymnos.

Then they look for what is called "the hairy stone," which possesses the remarkable property not only of keeping moths from clothes but even of multiplying the clothes in the chest where it is laid up, and the more hairs on the stone the more will the clothes multiply in the chest. In Calymnos the midsummer fire is supposed to ensure abundance in the coming year as well as deliverance from fleas.

In Brunswick people think that if a menstruous woman assists at the killing of a pig, the pork will putrefy. In the Greek island of Calymnos a woman at such times may not go to the well to draw water, nor cross a running stream, nor enter the sea. Her presence in a boat is said to raise storms.