CARSON— THE TRIAL OF ANIMALS AND INSECTS. 413 



inal courts, and after trial and condemnation were executed either 

 by hanging, or burning at the stake. Vermin such as field mice, 

 rats, moles and weasels and pestiferous creatures, such as bugs, 

 beetles, blooksuckers, caterpillars, cockchafers, eels, leeches, flies, 

 grasshoppers, frogs, locusts, serpents, slugs, snails, termites, weevils 

 and worms were disciplined by the ecclesiastical tribunals and in due 

 time excommunicated. 



This sharp distinction between the jurisdiction of the secular 

 and ecclesiastical tribunals is explained by Professor von Amira, 

 who says that animals, such as pigs, cows, horses and dogs, which 

 were in the service of man and who committed crimes against man- 

 kind, could be arrested, tried, convicted and executed like any other 

 members of his household, but rodents and insects were not the sub- 

 ject of human control, and could not be seized and imprisoned by 

 the civil authorities. Hence, it was necessary to appeal to the inter- 

 vention of the Church, and implore her to exercise her super- 

 natural functions for the purpose of compelling them to desist from 

 devastation of those fields and places devoted to the production of 

 human food. 



The explanation of the mental and moral attitude of the tribunals 

 in those days in relation to the subject is to be traced to the belief 

 of the ancient Greeks, who held that a murder, whether committed 

 by a man, a beast, or an inanimate object, such as a deadly weapon, 

 a spear, a knife, or a hammer, unless properly expiated, would 

 arouse the furies and bring pestilence upon the land. The mediaeval 

 Church taught the same doctrine, but substituted the demons of 

 Christian theology for the furies of classical mythology. Eminent 

 authorities, as ]\Ir. Evans has shown, maintained that all beasts and 

 birds, as well as creeping things were devils in disguise, and that 

 homicide committed by them, if it were permitted to go unpunished, 

 would furnish an opportunity^ for the intervention of devils to take 

 possession of persons and places. The cock at Basel, suspected 

 of laying an egg in violation of his sex, was feared as an abnormal, 

 inauspicious and therefore diabolic creature: the fatal cockatrice 

 might thus be hatched. While as to swine, they were peculiarly 

 attractive to devils, and hence peculiarly liable to diabolical posses- 



