474 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Jean Bodine quotes St. Augustine to the effect that a certain Pra3- 

 stantius confided to him an adventure of his father's, who, having been 

 drugged by a witch, was transformed into a horse, and had to carry a 

 load of corn ("De Civitate Dei" xviii, 18). Such transformations, says 

 Bodine, are still of daily occurrence, and only a false modesty prevents 

 the victims from achieving the glory of exposing the enchanter. 



Witches, it is well known, can change only the body, but not the 

 soul, of a fellow-creature ; the corn-carrying contemporary of St. Au- 

 gustine was doubtless conscious of his degradation, and no horse of 

 proper principles should hesitate, under such circumstances, to gallop 

 away and state his case to the next exorcist. In Northern Germany, 

 metamorphoses of that kind are especially frequent, the object of the 

 wizards being to secure a mount on their way to the Blocksberg, and, 

 though individuals have no jurisdiction in such matters, Monsieur Bo- 

 dine would advise the anthropohippos to watch his opportunity and dis- 

 able his rider by a well-aimed kick. Two gamekeepers of the Duke of 

 Brunswick, both men of unimpeachable veracity, once saw a whole cav- 

 alcade of Walpurgis-riders, but hesitated to shoot for fear of hitting a 

 hack instead of a hag. In the same duchy a witch in tormentis once 

 revealed a sentence that would horsify a man in a minute, but Mon- 

 sieur Bodine is happy to state that he has forgotten the formula. To re- 

 member such things is highly dangerous. One judge of the Criminal 

 Court of Lorraine had cross-examined so many witches that he at last 

 began to suspect himself, and, having dropped a hint to that effect, 

 was seized and burned with the proper rites. 



"With the exception of Ibn Chaldir, who passed nine tenths of his 

 long life in a public library, Robert Burton, the vicar of Segrave, was 

 probably the best-read man who ever lived. He had studied philology, 

 philosophy, theology, law, and medicine ; he was a first-class mathema- 

 tician, a zealous astronomer, and " calculator of nativities "; he had read 

 nearly every volume in the Bodleian collection and in the library of 

 Christ-Church College. He was well versed in the philosophical spec- 

 ulations of the mediasval school-men. He had mastered the inductive 

 system of his great contemporary. All this learning did not prevent 

 him from perpetrating the following dicta : 



" The air is not so full of flies in summer as it is at all times of in- 

 visible devils. . . . Fiery devils are such as commonly work by blaz- 

 ing stars, fire-drakes, or ignes fatui (which lead men often in fiumina 

 aut prazcijoitia), whom, if travelers wish to keep off, they must pro- 

 nounce the name of God with a clear voice, or adore him with their 

 faces in contact with the ground. . . . Aerial devils are such as keep 

 quarters in the air, cause tempests, thunder and lightning, make it rain 

 stones, wool, frogs, etc. . . . Subterranean devils are as common as 

 the rest, and do as much harm. The last are conversant about the 

 center of the earth, to torture the souls of damned men to the day of 

 judgment ; their egress and regress some suppose to be about Etna, 



