Show THE WHY of superstitions by H KINQ WISHBONES ALMOST everybody has at some time in his life broken a wish bone to see who gets his wish or placed one up over the door if the conjurer was a girl because she bad heard that the one she was destined to marry would be the first man who passes under it it Is probably because of this last superstition that the wish bone Is sometimes known as the mer FT thought the wishbone Is the clavicle or collarbone which in fowls and birds Is united in one forked structure which has a keel like bone at the place of juncture called the in two persons grasp with thumb ud forefinger each prong of the wish bhae and as they silently formulate i wish pull until the bone breaks the person to whose prong of the evered bone the adheres arts his wish there are other superstitions con with the wishbone but the two mentioned are the most common ones nd they go back to the days when the roman augurs from feigns given iy ay birds ex acad the kareta of destiny these signs were in the flight and cries of birds in the condition of their entrails in the ac bon of fowls and in the condition of tie bodas of birds and fowls the augurs having cast the lit prophecy oer fowls and their in elerior arrangements the peculiar chape of the wishbone made it most popular among the proletariat for pur poses of divination a popularity it still maintains though the nee science of the auspices hd been relegated for nearly two thousand years to learned tomes and osteal dictionaries aby newspaper syndicate |