flower oracle, often employed by children of a larger growth. It has been set to music.

Holding the pretty field buttercup under another’s chin, in order to see if he or she loves butter, is a good form of divination. So is the practice of blowing off the fluffy dandelion top, after the flower has gone to seed, to determine the hour, as that flower always opens at about five in the morning, and shuts at about eight in the evening, thus making it stand in the room of a clock for shepherds. This plant has also been called the rustic oracle. To find the time of day, as many puffs as it takes to blow away the downy seed balls gives the answer. The same method of divination is employed by children to find out if their mothers want them; or to waft a message to some loved one; or to know if such or such a person is thinking of them; and whether he or she lives north, east, south, or west.

To the same general purport is the invocation:

We understand that the equally familiar form,—

is repeated in China as well as in this country, though sometimes altered to

One equally familiar form of childish invocation appears in the pretty little lady-bird rhyme, so often repeated by the young:—

A favorite way, with boys, of choosing sides for a game of ball is by measuring the stick. To do this, the leader of one side first heaves the stick in the air, skilfully catching it, as it falls, at a point as near a hand’s-breadth to the end as possible, as his opponent must then measure the stick with him, alternately hand-over-hand, from the point where it is caught. The one securing enough of the last of the stick for a hold, has the first choice. This is determination by lot.

Still another form of invocation, formerly much used to clinch a bargain between boys, when “swapping” jack-knives or marbles, runs to this effect:—

The process of counting a person out in the familiar phrase as being “it,” is fairly traced back to the ancient custom of designating a criminal from among his fellows by lot. The form that we know the best in New England, a sort of barbaric doggerel, according to Mr. Burton, is still current in Cornwall, England, and goes in this wise:—

The resemblance between the foregoing, and what is current among playfellows on this side of the water easily suggests that the boys of the “good Old Colony times,” so often referred to with a sigh of regret, brought their games and pastimes along with them. As now remembered, the doggerel charm runs as follows:—