a hail-storm did considerable damage to the crops; and
a girl, the daughter of a shoemaker in the town, remembered to have heard
in the night the execrations of the wizards. Her story led to their
arrest. The usual means to produce confession were resorted to. The
wizards owned that they could raise tempests whenever they pleased, and
named several persons who possessed similar powers. They were hanged, and
then burned in the market-place, and seven of the persons they had
mentioned shared the same fate.

Hoppo and Stadlin, two noted wizards of Germany, were executed in 1599.
They implicated twenty or thirty witches, who went about causing women to
miscarry, bringing down the lightning of heaven, and making maidens bring
forth toads. To this latter fact several girls were found to swear most
positively! Stadlin confessed that he had killed seven infants in the womb
of one woman.

Bodinus highly praises the exertions of a witch-finder named Nider, in
France, who prosecuted so many that he could not calculate them. Some of
these witches could, by a single word, cause people to fall down dead;
others made women go with child three years instead of nine months; while
others, by certain invocations and ceremonies, could turn the faces of
their enemies upside down, or twist them round to their backs. Although no
witness was ever procured who saw persons in this horrible state, the
witches confessed that they had the power and exercised it. Nothing more
was wanting to ensure the stake.

At Amsterdam a crazy girl confessed that she could cause sterility in
cattle, and bewitch pigs and poultry by merely repeating the magic words
_Turius und Shurius Inturius_! She was hanged and burned. Another woman in
the same city, named Kornelis van Purmerund, was arrested in consequence
of some disclosures the former had made. A witness came forward and swore
that she one day looked through the window of her hut, and saw Kornelis
sitting before a fire muttering something to the devil. She was sure it
was to the devil, because she heard him answer her. Shortly afterwards
twelve black cats ascended out of the floor, and danced on their hind legs
around the witch for the space of about half an hour. They then vanished
with a horrid noise, and leaving a disagreeable smell behind them. She
also was hanged and burned.

At Bamberg, in Bavaria, the executions from the year 1610 to 1640 were at
the rate of about a hundred annually. One woman, sus