Second now added in this Third Edition as succedaneous to
the former, and conducing to the completing of the whole work." This
Second Book, though stated as succedaneous to the first, is, in fact,
entirely at variance with it; for the work of Reginald Scott is a
compilation of the absurd and superstitious ideas concerning witches
so generally entertained at the time, and the pretended conclusion is a
serious treatise on the various means of conjuring astral spirits.

[Scott's Discovery of Witchcraft was first published in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth, London, 1584.]

Note G, p. #.--Gynecocracy.

In the fishing villages on the Firths of Forth and Tay, as well as
elsewhere in Scotland, the government is gynecocracy, as described
in the text. In the course of the late war, and during the alarm of
invasion, a fleet of transports entered the Firth of Forth under the
convoy of some ships of war, which would reply to no signals. A general
alarm was excited, in consequence of which, all the fishers, who were
enrolled as sea-fencibles, got on board the gun-boats which they were to
man as occasion should require, and sailed to oppose the supposed enemy.
The foreigners proved to be Russians, with whom we were then at peace.
The county gentlemen of Mid-Lothian, pleased with the zeal displayed by
the sea-fencibles at a critical moment, passed a vote for presenting the
community of fishers with a silver punch-bowl, to be used on occasions
of festivity. But the fisher-women, on hearing what was intended, put in
their claim to have some separate share in the intended honorary reward.
The men, they said, were their husbands; it was they who would have
been sufferers if their husbands had been killed, and it was by their
permission and injunctions that they embarked on board the gun-boats for
the public service. They therefore claimed to share the reward in some
manner which should distinguish the female patriotism which they had
shown on the occasion. The gentlemen of the county willingly admitted
the claim; and without diminishing the value of their compliment to the
men, they made the females a present of a valuable broach, to fasten the
plaid of the queen of the fisher-women for the time.

It may be further remarked, that these Nereids are punctilious among
themselves, and observe different ranks according to the commodities
they deal in. One experienced dame was heard to characterise a younger
damsel as "a puir silly thing, who h