362 PUNISHMENT BY MAN. 



cows, and dogs were suspended on the public gibbet by the 

 public hangman. Caterpillars when they became trouble- 

 some were declared accursed, and were solemnly excommu- 

 nicated. 



In what is now complacently designated a ' superstitious 

 age,' at a time when a belief in witchcraft, sorcery, magic, 

 and diabolic art was rife, and was consigning innocent old 

 women to the stake or to the mill-pond, it is not surprising 

 that innocent animals should have been cruelly punished 

 for purely imaginary offences. Black cats and horses, black 

 animals in general, and perhaps in proportion to their mere 

 blackness, were supposed to be possessed by, or instruments of, 

 or connected in some way with, the devil ; and short and sharp 

 was their shrift accordingly. A cock was accused of, and 

 condemned to, death by burning, for having it was said or 

 supposed laid an egg : a phenomenon that was so obviously 

 out of the ordinary course of nature, that it was ascribed to 

 the agency of the supernatural, to witchcraft, or satanic in- 

 fluence. Bees were condemned to death by burning for 

 various crimes, such probably as stinging a child or a man. 

 Houzeau mentions the judicial punishment of a horse for 

 supposed magic, which was really only a sort of dancing, or 

 other eccentric motor phenomenon in the animal. 



Capital punishment was inflicted for various forms of theft 

 as it was for sheep- stealing by dogs in our own country in 

 comparatively recenb times. * Yarrow/ for instance, was tried, 

 condemned, and executed as particeps criminis with its master 

 in sheep-stealing. Swine, rabbits, pigeons, geese were pro- 

 scribed en masse or individually, while letters of excommuni- 

 cation were issued against caterpillars and field mice ; or 

 caterpillars, when they became a nuisance, were declared 

 accursed, as well as solemnly excommunicated. In times of 

 public calamity, when human life was destroyed in a whole- 

 sale way probably as the natural penalty of some of man's 

 transgressions of physiological or sanitary law casting 

 about for a cause of calamity, and it may have been also for 

 some sort or measure of propitiatory sacrifice, an ignorant, 

 superstitious, priest-ridden populace has been too apt to find 

 vent for its distress by sacrificing the harmless domestic ani- 



