_Sitting crosslegged to avert Evil_ (Vol. ii.,p. 407.).--Browne says:--
"To set crosselegg'd, or with our fingers pectinated or shut together,
is accounted bad, and friends will perswade us from it. The same
conceit religiously possessed the ancients, as is observable from
Pliny: 'Poplites alternis genibus imponere nefas olim;' and also from
Athenaeus, that it was an old veneficious practice."--_Vulg. Err._, lib.
v. cap. xxi. Sec. 9.