and cut it open. Out came the milk. On a thorough examination he concluded that the toad "no ways differed from other toades," but that the melancholy old woman had brought it home some evening and had tamed it by feeding and had so come to believe it a spirit and her familiar. When the woman returned and found her "familiar" cut in pieces, she "flew like a Tigris" at his face. The physician offered her money and tried to persuade her that her familiar was nothing more than a toad. When he found that this did not pacify her he took another tack and told her that he was the king's physician, sent to discover if she were a witch, and, in case she were, to have her apprehended. With this explanation, Harvey was able to get away. He related the story to the king, whose leave he had to go on the expedition. The narrator adds: "I am certayne this for an argument against spirits or witchcraft is the best and most experimentall I ever heard." Who the justice of the peace was that penned this letter, we are unable even to guess, nor do we know upon whose authority it was published. We cannot, therefore, rest upon it with absolute certainty, but we can say that it possesses several characteristics of a _bona fide_ letter.[33] If it is such, it gives a new clue to Harvey's conduct in 1634. We of course cannot be sure that the toad incident happened before that time; quite possibly it was after the interest aroused by that affair that the physician made his investigation. At all events, here was a man who had a scientific way of looking into superstition. The advent of such a man was most significant in the history of witchcraft, perhaps the most significant fact of its kind in the reign of Charles I. That reign, in spite of the Lancashire affair, was characterized by the continuance and growth of the witch skepticism,[34] so prevalent in the last years of the previous reign. Disbelief was not yet aggressive, it did not block prosecutions, but it hindered their effectiveness. The gallows was not yet done away with, but its use had been greatly restrained by the central government. Superstition was still a bird of prey, but its wings were being clipped.[35] [1] The writer of the _Collection of Modern Relations_ (London, 1693) speaks of an execution at Oxford, but there is nothing to substantiate it in the voluminous publications about Oxford; a Middlesex case rests also on doubtful evidence (see appendix C, 1641). [2] _Cal. St. P., Dom._, 1634-1635, 152. [3] _Ibid._, 141. [4] This is of course theory; _cf._ Daudet's story of his childhood in "_Le Pape est mort_."