ellow of the Royal Society, who lived nearly to 1700,
was requested to give an edition of Pliny: we have lost the benefit of a
most copious commentary! Bishop Hall went to "the Spa." The wood about
that place was haunted not only by "freebooters, but by wolves and
witches; although these last are ofttimes but one." They were called
_loups-garoux_; and the Greeks, it seems, knew them by the name of
[Greek: lukanthropoi], men-wolves: witches that have put on the shapes
of those cruel beasts. "We sawe a boy there, whose half-face was
devoured by one of them near the village; yet so, as that the eare was
rather cut than bitten off." Rumour had spread that the boy had had half
his face devoured; when it was examined, it turned out that his ear had
only been scratched! However, there can be no doubt of the existence of
"witch-wolves;" for Hall saw at Limburgh "one of those miscreants
executed, who confessed on the wheel to have devoured two-and-forty
children in that form." They would probably have found it difficult to
have summoned the mothers who had lost the children. But observe our
philosopher's reasoning: "It would aske a large volume to scan this
problem of _lycanthropy_." He had laboriously collected all the
evidence, and had added his arguments: the result offers a curious
instance of acute reasoning on a wrong principle.[204]

Men of science and art then passed their days in a bustle of the
marvellous. I will furnish a specimen of philosophical correspondence in
a letter to old John Aubrey. The writer betrays the versatility of his
curiosity by very opposite discoveries. "My hands are so full of work
that I have no time to transcribe for Dr. Henry More an account of the
Barnstable apparition--Lord Keeper North would take it kindly from
you--give a sight of this letter from Barnstable to Dr. Whitchcot." He
had lately heard of a Scotchman who had been carried by fairies into
France; but the purpose of his present letter is to communicate other
sort of apparitions than the ghost of Barnstable. He had gone to
Glastonbury, "to pick up a few berries from the holy thorn which
flowered every Christmas day."[205] The original thorn had been cut down
by a military saint in the civil wars; but the trade of the place was
not damaged, for they had contrived not to have a single holy thorn, but
several, "by grafting and inoculation."[206] He promises to send these
"berries;" but requests Aubrey to inform "that person of quality w