Considered as a condition hurtful to the type, the conception of degeneracy may be said to appear even in the precursors of man, since animals destroy soon after birth offspring which, to them, appear peculiar. With that stage of development of the religious sense marked by assigning malign occult powers to natural objects and forces, this view of degeneracy became systematised, and exposed weakly or deformed offspring, charged to evil powers, to death. This occult conception of degeneracy is even yet a part of American folklore. Against degenerate children charms are still used by the "witch-doctors" among the "Pennsylvania Dutch." These people are on the level of culture of the early seventeenth century middle class English, if not a little below it. The folklore of these, as embodied in Shakespeare, demonstrates, according to J. G. Kiernan,[1] that ere the seventeenth century the fact that "mental and moral defect expressed itself in physical stigmata was recognised and even the term used." Thistleton Dyer[2] remarks that it is an old prejudice, not yet extinct, that those who are defective or deformed are marked by nature as prone to mischief. Thus in _King Richard III._ (i. 3) Margaret calls Richard-- "Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog! Thou that wast sealed in thy nativity The slave of nature and the son of hell!" She calls him hog in allusion to his cognisance, which was a boar. A popular expression in Shakespeare's day for a deformed person was "stigmatic." It denoted any one who had been stigmatised or burnt with iron (an ignominious punishment), and hence was employed to represent a person on whom nature had set a mark of deformity. Thus in the Third Part of _Henry VI._ (ii. 2) Queen Margaret says-- "But thou art neither like thy sire nor dam; But like a foul misshapen stigmatic, Marked by the destinies to be avoided, As venom toads, or lizards' dreadful stings." Again in the Second Part of _Henry VI._ (v. 1) young Clifford says to Richard-- "Foul stigmatic, that's more than thou canst tell." In _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ (v. 1) Oberon wards off degeneracy from the issue of the happy lovers by the following charm-- "And the blots of Nature's hand Shall not in their issue stand; Never mole, hare-lip nor scar, Nor mark prodigious, such as are Despised in nativity, Shall upon their children be." Constant allusions to this subject occur in old writers, showing how strong was the belief of the early English on this point. King John (iv. 2) calls Hubert, the supposed murderer of Prince Arthur,-- "A fellow by the hand of Nature marked, Quoted and signed to do a deed of shame." Concerning this adaptation of the mind to the deformity of the body Francis Bacon remarks: "Deformed persons are commonly even with Nature, for as Nature hath done ill by them so do they by Nature, being void of natural affection, and so they have their revenge on Nature."