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The nursery peasant tales collected by Grimm and Crane, and many more, represent surface-diggings. Those who were first in the field had an easy time in gathering what thousands knew. But these finds are becoming exhausted, and the collector of the future must mine out of the rock, and seek for deeper traditions which have been sedulously concealed or kept secret. There are still many peasants who know this lore, though their number is very rapidly diminishing, and they are, as a rule, without exception, extremely averse to communicating it to anyone whom they know or think is not what I may call a fellow-heathen, or in true sympathy with them. I may give in illustration of this an incident which occurred recently as I write: Miss Roma Lister, who had an old Italian witch-nurse, still living in Rome (and who has contributed several of these tales of Virgil), who taught her something of the art “which none may name,” while walking with a priest near Calmaldoli, met with a man whom she knew had the reputation of being a stregone, or wizard. She asked him, sotto voce, if he knew the name of Tinia, one of the Etruscan gods, still remembered by a few, and who is described in the “Etrusco-Roman Remains.” He hastily replied in a whisper: “Yes, yes; and I know the incantation to him also—but don’t let the priest hear us.” At a subsequent meeting they interchanged confidences freely. Maddalena, whom I have chiefly employed to make collections among witches and others, has often told me how unwilling those who knew any witch-lore are to confess it, especially to ladies or gentlemen. One must literally conjure it out of them.