There are finally certain phenomena belonging to this part of magic, which have been very generally attributed to an agency in which natural forces and supernatural beings held a nearly equal share. They suggest the interesting but difficult question, whether visions and ecstasy can extend to large numbers of men at once? And yet without some such supposition the armies in the clouds, the wild huntsman of the Ardennes, and like appearances cannot well be explained. Here also no little weight must be attached to ancient superstitions which have become, as it were, a part of a nation's faith. Thus all Northern Germany has from the earliest days been familiar with the idea of the great Woden ranging through its dark forests, at the head of the Walkyries and the heroes fallen in battle, while his wolves and his raven followed him on his nightly course. When Christianity changed the old gods of the German race into devils and demons, Woden became very naturally the wild huntsman, who was now escorted by men of violence, bloody tyrants, and criminals, often grievously mutilated or altogether headless. There can be little doubt but that these visions also rested upon some natural substructure: exceptional atmospheric disturbances, hurricanes coming from afar and crashing through mighty forests, or even the modest tramp of a band of poachers heard afar off, under favorable circumstances by timid ears. The very fact that the favorite time for such phenomena is the winter solstice favors this supposition. They are, however, by no means limited to seasons and days, for as late as 1842 a number of wheat-cutters left in a panic the field in which they were engaged, because they believed they heard Frau Holle with her hellish company, and saw Faithful Eckhard, as he walked steadily before the procession, warning all he met to stand aside and escape from the fatal sight. An occurrence of the kind, which took place in 1857, was fortunately fully explained by careful observers: the cause was an immense flock of wild geese, whose strange cries resembled in a surprising manner the barking of a pack of hounds during a hunt. Another occurrence during the night of January 30, 1849, threw the whole neighborhood of Basle in Switzerland into painful consternation. The air was suddenly filled with a multitude of whining voices, whose agony pierced the hearts of all who heard them; men and beasts seemed to be suffering unutterable anguish, and to be driven with furious speed from the mountain-side into a valley near Magden; here all ended in an instant amid rolling thunder and fearful flashes of lightning. A fierce storm arising in distant clefts and crevices, and carrying possibly fragments of rock, ice, and moraine along with it, seems here to have been the determining cause.