out thus:--They fixed the
criminal up to his knees in manure, and having twined a hard cloth
within a soft one round his neck, one witness pulled one way and the
other pulled in an opposite direction till life was extinct.

_Sanhedrin_, fol. 42, col. 2; fol. 49, col. 2; fol. 52, cols. 1, 2.

The above, which has been translated almost literally from the
Talmud, may serve to remove many misconceptions now current as
to the modes of capital punishment that obtained in Jewry.

In further illustration of this topic, we will append some of
the legal decisions that are recorded in the Talmud,
authenticating each by reference to folio and column. Examples
might be multiplied by the score, but a sufficient number will
be quoted to give a fair idea of Rabbinic jurisprudence.

If one who intends to kill a beast (accidentally) kill a man; or if,
purposing to kill a Gentile, he slay an Israelite; or if he destroy a
foetus in mistake for an embryo, he shall be free; i.e., not guilty.

Ibid., fol. 78, col. 2.

He who has been flogged and exposes himself again to the same punishment
is to be shut up in a narrow cell, in which he can only stand upright,
and be fed with barley till he burst.

Ibid., fol. 81, col. 2.

If one commits murder, and there is not sufficient legal evidence, he is
to be shut up in a narrow cell and fed with "the bread of adversity and
the water of affliction" (Isa. xxx. 20). They give him this diet till
his bowels shrink, and then he is fed with barley till (as it swells in
his bowels) his intestines burst.

Ibid.

A woman who is doomed, being _enceinte_, to suffer the extreme penalty
of the law, is first beaten, about the womb, lest a mishap occur at the
execution.

_Erachin_, fol. 7, col. 1.

If a woman who has vowed the vow of a Nazarite drink wine or defile
herself by contact with a dead body (see Num. vi. 2-6), she is to
undergo the punishment of forty stripes.

_Nazir_, fol. 23, col. 1.

The Rabbis teach that when the woman has to be flogged, the man has only
to bring a sacrifice; and that if she is not to be flogged, the man is
not required to bring a sacrifice. (This is in reference to Lev. xix.
20, 21.)

_Kerithoth_, fol. 11, col. 1.

Rav Yehudah says, "He that eats a certain aquatic insect, the swallowing
of which while drinking would involve no penalty whatever--Tosefoth,
receives forty stripes save one (the penalty for transgressing the
negative p