The President also read the following letters from Mr. Thomas Hardy and Mr. J. G. Frazer:—
October 30, 1896.
My dear Clodd,
Here is a bit of folklore that I have just been reminded of.
If you plant a tree or trees, and you are very anxious that they should thrive, you must not go and look at them, or look out of the window at them "on an empty stomach." There is a blasting influence in your eye then which will make them pine away. And the story is that a man, puzzled by this withering of his newly-planted choice trees, went to a white witch to enquire who was the evil-worker. The white witch, after ascertaining the facts, told him it was himself.
You will be able to classify this, no doubt, and say exactly where it belongs in the evolutionary chain of folklore. . . .
Thomas Hardy.
The President having communicated the substance of this letter to Mr. Frazer, and suggested that the explanation lay in the hungry man looking on the trees, which thereby became sympathetically starved, and so died, Mr. Frazer replied:—
November 1st, 1896.
Dear Mr. Clodd,
The superstition you mention was unknown to me, but your explanation of it seems highly probable.
As explained by you, the superstition is a very interesting example of the supposed sympathetic connection between a man and a tree. As you say, it bears very closely on my explanation of the connection between the priest of Diana at Aricia and the sacred tree, he having to be always in the prime of health and vigour in order that the tree might be so too. I am pleased to find my theory (which I confess often seems to me far-fetched, so remote is it from our nineteenth century educated ways of thought) confirmed by evidence so near home. It is one more indication