Passage IWhen restoring an old house in Ireland,it's not unusual to find a horse skull under the floor.While the rather scary discovery might suggest some ritual sacrifice,it likely has a more practical origin:acoustics(音响效果)-the large volume of the skull made it an ideal sound-box.Back in 1945, published a survey of foundation finds in the Jowrnal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland.It revealed that throughout Ireland,horse skulls were hidden beneath floorboards,sometimes with their hollows packed with coins.Sean Mac Mathghamhna of County Clare stated:"I used to hear the old people say that it was put there for the purpose of giving a fine echo to the house when people would be talking or walking inside the house.But,particularly,they put the head (with the coppers)in the floor so that their dancing would sound better,for the old people were all for sport."From County Kerr came a tale of a horse skull placed under a bridge "to give it a clear echo";in County Wexford skulls were reportedly placed below church altars(祭坛)to help the preacher to be heard all over the church.In some churches up to twenty of these heads were buried together.Others wrote that the skulls had a more superstitious(迷信的)purpose,suspecting that they were buried for luck.Eamonn P.Kelly.a retired keeper of the National Museum of Ireland,writes in Archaeology Ireland that horses“have been credited with the ability to see evil spirits,and this may account for the practice of placing a horse skull beneath floorboards to drive away ghosts."There is evidence of acoustical horse skull use beyond Ireland,including around the U.K.and in Scandinavia.And when people from these places immigrated to the United States,they brought these traditions with them.Historian M.Chris Manning relates in Historical Archaeology the case of a skull found in a house in South Deerfield,Massachusetts.In its eye was a bit of paper with the names of the family of Colonel David Mason Bryant,who moved into the home in 1848."The skull was likely added to the wall during a period of structural alteration as part of a ritual similar to a time capsule or cormerstone deposit,"writes Manning.“On the other hand,the fact that the Bryant family,whose ancestors were English,chose to include a horse skull within the walls of their home indicates the tradition of concealing horse skulls was still alive and well in 19th century America."Why did people bury horse skulls in their houses according to Paragraph 2?