6
is luxurious, fearful, and an epicure, loving enjoyment. When there are certain white marks at the end, they testify that the person is improvident, soon ruining his fortune through negligence. Narrow nails indicate a desire to attain knowledge in the sciences. When to narrowness they add some degree of length, the person is led away by ambitious desires, aiming at things he cannot obtain; one who, having formed notions of grandeur, grasps at the shadow, while he loses the substance. If at both ends there is a redness, or mixture of several colours, the person is choleric, and delights in fighting. When the end is black, the man loves agriculture; he places happiness in mediocrity, and from thence avoids the cares attendant on either extreme of fortune. Round nails declare a hasty person, yet good-natured, and very forgiving, a lover of knowledge, honest in mind, doing no one any harm, and acting according to his own imagination, being rather too proud of his own abilities. When the nails are long, the person is good-natured, but placing confidence in no man, being from his youth conversant in deceit, yet not practising it, from the goodness of his nature and a love of virtue. Fleshy nails show a calm person and idler, loving to sleep, eat, and drink; not delighting in bustle and a busy life. Little round nails discover a person to be obstinate, seldom pleased, inclining to hate every one, as conceiving himself superior to others, though without any foundation for such conception. Pale or lead-coloured nails denote a melancholy person, one who through choice leads a sedentary life, and would willingly give up all things for the sake of study. Red and spotted nails indicate the person choleric and martial, delighting in cruelty and war; his chief pleasure being in plundering of towns, where every ferocious particle in human nature is glutted to satiety. When upon the nails you find any black spots, they always signify evil, as white ones are a token of good. When the nails are white, and long, the person is subject to great sickness; he is well-made and comely, but much inclined to women, who deceive him through false pretences, and shortly bring him to ruin. If upon the white there appear pale lead-coloured spots, a short life and addicted to melancholy.
Moles.—These are little marks on the skin, although they appear to be the effect of chance or accident, and might easily pass with the unthinking for things of no moment, are nevertheless of the utmost consequence, since from their colour, situation, size, and figure, may be accurately gathered the temper of, and the events that will happen to, the person bearing them.
