OF SELBOENE 161 



When a tall youth he was removed from hence to a distant 

 village, where he died, as I understand, before he arrived at 

 manhood. 



I am, &c. 



LETTER XXVIII. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, Jan. 8, 1776. 

 Dear Sir, 



It is the hardest thing in the world to shake off superstitious 

 prejudices : they are sucked in as it were with our mother's 

 milk ; and, growing up with us at a time when they take the 

 fastest hold and make the most lasting impressions, become so 

 interwoven into our very constitutions, that the strongest good 

 sense is required to disengage ourselves from them. No wonder 

 therefore that the lower people retain them their whole lives 

 through, since their minds are not invigorated by a liberal 

 education, and therefore not enabled to make any efforts adequate 

 to the occasion. 



Such a preamble seems to be necessary before we enter on 

 the superstitions of this district, lest we should be suspected of 

 exaggeration in a recital of practices too gross for this enlightened 

 age. 



But the people of Tring, in Hertfordshire, would do well to 

 remember, that no longer ago than the year 1751, and within 

 twenty miles of the capital, they seized on two superannuated 

 wretches, crazed with age, and overwhelmed with infirmities, 

 on a suspicion of witchcraft ; and, by trying experiments, drowned 

 them in a horse-pond. 



In a farm-yard near the middle of this village stands, at this 

 day, a row of pollard-ashes, which, by the seams and long 

 cicatrices down their sides, manifestly show that, in former 

 times, they have been cleft asunder. These trees, when young 

 and flexible, were severed and held open by wedges, while 

 ruptured children, stripped naked, were pushed through the 

 apertures, under a persuasion that, by such a process, the poor 

 babes would be cured of their infirmity. As soon as the opera- 

 tion was over, the tree, in the suffering part, was plastered with 

 loam, and carefully swathed up. If the parts coalesced and 

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