I suppose you may remember the statements of old authors about lycanthropy, the disease in which men took on the nature and aspect of wolves.  Aetius and Paulus, both men of authority, describe it.  Altomaris gives a horrid case; and Fincelius mentions one occurring as late as 1541, the subject of which was captured, still insisting that he was a wolf, only that the hair of his hide was turned in! Versipelles, it may be remembered, was the Latin name for these “were-wolves.”

As for the cases where rabid persons have barked and bit like dogs, there are plenty of such on record.

More singular, or at least more rare, is the account given by Andreas Baccius, of a man who was struck in the hand by a cock, with his beak, and who died on the third day thereafter, looking for all the world like a fighting-cock, to the great horror of the spectators.

As to impressions transmitted at a very early period of existence, every one knows the story of King James’s fear of a naked sword and the way it is accounted for.  Sir Kenelm Digby says,—­“I remember when he dubbed me Knight, in the ceremony of putting the point of a naked sword upon my shoulder, he could not endure to look upon it, but turned his face another way, insomuch, that, in lieu of touching my shoulder, he had almost thrust the point into my eyes, had not the Duke of Buckingham guided his hand aright.”  It is he, too, who tells the story of the mulberry mark upon the neck of a certain lady of high condition, which “every year, in mulberry season, did swell, grow big, and itch.”  And Gaffarel mentions the case of a girl born with the figure of a fish on one of her limbs, of which the wonder was, that, when the girl did eat fish, this mark put her to sensible pain.  But there is no end to cases of this kind, and I could give some of recent date, if necessary, lending a certain plausibility at least to the doctrine of transmitted impressions.

I never saw a distinct case of evil eye, though I have seen eyes so bad that they might produce strange effects on very sensitive natures.  But the belief in it under various names, fascination, jettatura, etc., is so permanent and universal, from Egypt to Italy, and from the days of Solomon to those of Ferdinand of Naples, that there must be some peculiarity, to say the least, on which the opinion is based.  There is very strong evidence that some such power is exercised by certain of the lower animals.  Thus, it is stated on good authority that “almost every animal becomes panic-struck at the sight of the rattlesnake, and seems at once deprived of the power of motion, or the exercise of its usual instinct of self-preservation.”  Other serpents seem to share this power of fascination, as the Cobra and the Bucephalus Capensis.  Some think that it is nothing but fright; others attribute it to the

  “strange powers that lie
  Within the magic circle of the eye,”—­