T a. “The said Margerie did carrie the said Toade out of the said house in a paire of tonges.”] This toad was disposed of more easily than that of Julian Cox, as to which see Glanvil’s Collection of Relations, p. 192:—­

Another witness swore, that as he passed by Cox her door, she was taking a pipe of tobacco upon the threshold of her door, and invited him to come in and take a pipe, which he did.  And as he was talking Julian said to him, Neighbour, look what a pretty thing there is.  He look’t down, and there was a monstrous great toad betwixt his leggs, staring him in the face.  He endeavoured to kill it by spurning it, but could not hit it.  Whereupon Julian bad him forbear, and it would do him no hurt.  But he threw down his pipe and went home, (which was about two miles off of Julian Cox her house,) and told his family what had happened, and that he believed it was one of Julian Cox her devils.  After, he was taking a pipe of tobacco at home, and the same toad appeared betwixt his leggs.  He took the toad out to kill it, and to his thinking cut it in several pieces, but returning to his pipe, the toad still appeared.  He endeavoured to burn it, but could not.  At length he took a switch and beat it.  The toad ran several times about the room to avoid him he still pursuing it with correction.  At length the toad cryed and vanish’t, and he was never after troubled with it.

Dr. More’s comment on the circumstance is written with all the seriousness so important a part of a witch’s supellex deserves.  He commences defending the huntsman, who swore that he hunted a hare, and when he came to take it up, he found it to be Julian Cox: 

Those half-witted people thought he swore false, I suppose because they imagined that what he told implied that Julian Cox was turned into an hare.  Which she was not, nor did his report imply any such real metamorphosis of her body, but that these ludicrous daemons exhibited to the sight of this huntsman and his doggs the shape of an Hare, one of them turning himself into such a form, and others hurrying on the body of Julian near the same place, and at the same swiftness, but interposing betwixt that hare-like spectre and her body, modifying the air so that the scene there, to the beholders sight, was as if nothing but air were there, and a shew of earth perpetually suited to that where the hare passed.  As I have heard of some painters that have drawn the sky in an huge large landskip, so lively that the birds have flown against it, thinking it free air, and so have fallen down.  And if painters and juglers by the tricks of legerdemain can do such strange feats to the deceiving of the sight, it is no wonder that these airy invisible spirits as far surpass them in all such praestigious doings as the air surpasses the earth for subtilty.

And the like praestigiae may be in the toad.  It might be a real toad (though