208 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



determined to bury him alive in order to appease the demon of the 

 plague. He escaped this horrible death only by apparently acceding 

 to their wishes and craving a few days' respite in order to prepare for 

 such a solemn ceremony; meanwhile he took the measures necessary 

 to secure his safety and thwarted the purpose of his loving parish- 

 ioners. In Okopovitchi, a village of the same province, the peasants 

 succeeded in enticing an aged woman, Lucia Manjkov, into the 

 cemetery, where they thrust her alive into the grave containing the 

 bodies of those who had died of the epidemic, and quickly covered 

 her up. "When brought to trial they proved that they had acted on 

 the advice of a military surgeon, Kosakovitch, who was therefore 

 regarded as the chief culprit, and sentenced to be knout ed by the 

 hangman, and then to undergo twelve years' penal servitude in 

 Siberia. We are indebted for these instances of barbarous super- 

 stition to the researches of Augustus Lowenstimm, associate juris- 

 consult in the department of justice at St. Petersburg, who has 

 derived them from thoroughly authentic and mostly official sources. 

 He reports several occurrences of a similar kind during the epi- 

 demics of cholera in 1831, 1855, and 1872. Indeed, it is very 

 difficult to abolish such pagan practices so long as the clergy 

 foster the notion that animal sacrifices are expiatory and propitia- 

 tory in their effects. In some parts of the province of Vologda 

 {■, is still customary on the day dedicated to the prophet Elias 

 (July 20th in the Greek calendar) to offer up bullocks, he-goats, or 

 other quadrupeds within the precincts of the church. The animal 

 is driven into the courtyard surrounding the sacred edifice and there 

 slaughtered; the flesh is boiled in a large kettle, one half of it being 

 kept by the peasants who provide the sacrifice, while the other half 

 is distributed among the priests and sacristans.* 



The belief that the walls of dams, bridges, aqueducts, and build- 

 ings are rendered preternaturally strong by immuring a living human 

 being within them still prevails in many countries of Christendom, 

 and there is hardly an old castle in Europe that has not a legend of 

 this sort connected with it. Usually a child is supposed to be selected 

 for this purpose, and the roving bands of gypsies are popularly 

 accused of furnishing the infant victims. The custom of depositing 

 gold coins or other precious objects in the foundation stones of im- 

 portant public edifices is doubtless a survival of the ancient super- 

 stition, f 



* Lowenstimm's studies, printed originally in the Journal of the Ministry of Justice in 

 St. Petersburg, have been made accessible to a larger class of readers by being collected 

 and translated into German in a volume entitled Aberglaube und Strafrecht (Berlin : Rade, 

 1897), with an introduction by Prof. Joseph Kohler, of the University of Berlin. 



f As the Siberian Railway approached the northern boundaries of the Chinese Empire 

 and surveys were made for its extension through Manchuria to the sea, great excitement 



