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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



may therefore have been introduced by the Spaniards, for at one 

 time VenvouteTYient was believed in nearly all over Europe ; even 

 yet credence is given to it among voodoo societies in Louisiana. 

 Uenvoutement consists in pricking and slowly melting a small 

 wax figure representing the individual intended for a victim of 

 magic art. Charles IX, of France, was said to have come to his 



Indian Women spinning. 



death by means of wax figures made to his likeness and cursed 

 by magic art which his enemies, the Protestant sorcerers, caused 

 to melt, a little every day, thus extinguishing the life of the king 

 by degrees as the figures were consumed. 



That same monarch is said to have expelled thirty thousand 

 sorcerers from the city of Paris ; and during the reign of Henry 

 III, France was supposed to be infested with one hundred thou- 

 sand individuals who practiced the black art. Physicians in 

 those days made the sorcerers responsible for all diseases that 

 they failed to cure. Consumptives especially were supposed to 

 waste away as the wax figures did when melted. 



In former times the Indians used to abandon a house after one 

 died in it, because they buried the body either in the house or at 

 the back of it, and were very much afraid of seeing the ghost of 

 the dear departed. Strange creatures, to weep so much at losing 

 them, and then be terrified at the thought of their returning ! 



They believed that the lower animals also had souls, for they 

 used to put with the corpse of their relations certain provisions 



