Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/793

Rh without the intervention of an archangel. Indeed, almost everyone has had a similar experience in looking for something on a table or shelf in vain, and then finding it there a few moments later. The momentary oversight may be due to mental abstraction or to a transient visual blur. The angels, we are assured, did not lose by their fall this power of carrying off things invisibly, which therefore remains an attribute of devils, and enables them to indulge their propensity to steal without detection. They sometimes pilfer fruit and grain, but seem to have a special fondness for milk and eggs, a very simple diet, one would think, for infernal spirits. Many persons who keep fowls are often surprised that they do not get any eggs. The hen sits on the nest, lays or at least cackles, but the nest is empty. If such a hen be killed, plenty of eggs in a more or less advanced stage of development will be found in the ovary, and the oviduct will prove to be perfectly healthy and normal. From these facts a strictly logical mind, like that of our learned doctor, can come to only one conclusion: a demon stole the eggs. The same is true of cows, goats, and other lactiferous animals which grow lean and cease to give milk, although they are provided with the most nutritious fodder. "In such cases it is right to assume the workings of witchcraft, and to apply the formula contra maleficium invisibilis ablationis lactis, etc., of the Constance Benedictional." In the earlier centuries of the Christian era, before this ritual existed, simpler methods of exorcism were employed and are still effective, such as blessing the stalls, the fodder, and the cows, and washing the teats with holy water, which may be warmed if the animals are sensitive to cold. Snarled tufts of hair or tangles of hemp indicate demonism, and should be thrown into the fire with the words "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." Dr. Bischofberger admits that "egg-stealing is more difficult to stop, because the priest has less power over hens." The best remedy is to surround the nests with consecrated things, so that the demon can not get through without coming in contact with them; he will then probably desist. Granaries and fruit lofts are to be protected in the same manner.

In conclusion, the author of this manual of exorcism says, "People fondly imagine that these cunning devices of the Prince of Darkness may have been practiced in former centuries, but that they have been dissipated by the light of the nineteenth century like the mist before the sun." His thirty-seven years' experience as a priest prove this optimistic assumption to be wholly unfounded.