We have the authority of Dr. Ploss for the statement that among the Slavs witches produce considerable disquiet in families, into which, folk say, they penetrate in the disguise of hens or butterflies. They steal the hearts of children in order to eat them. They strike the child on the left side with a little rod; the breast opens, and the witches tear out the heart, and devour every atom of it. Thereupon the wound closes up of itself, without leaving a trace of what has been done. The child dies either immediately or soon afterwards, as the witch chooses. Many children's illnesses are attributed to this cause. If one of these witches is caught asleep, the people seize her, and move her so as to place her head where her feet were before. On awaking, she has lost all her power for evil, and is transformed into a medicine-woman, who is acquainted with the healing effects of every herb, and aids in curing children of their diseases. In Heine's poem, "The Pilgrimage to Kevlaar," the love-lorn youth seeks the cure of his heart's ill by placing a waxen heart on the shrine. This is unquestionably the most exquisite use in literature of the heart as a charm. Two or three of the stories that I have noted down on the gruesome subject of heart-eating have been given above. Such ideas were abhorrent to the Jewish conscience, and the use of the heart torn from a living animal was regarded as characteristic of idolatry (Jerusalem Talmud, _Aboda Zara_, ii, 41b). In the Book of Tobit a fish's heart plays a part, but it is detached from the dead animal, and is not eaten. It forms an ingredient of the smoke which exorcises the demon that is troubling the heroine Sarah. I have not come across any passage in the Jewish Midrashim that ascribes to "heart-eating," even in folk-lore, the virtue of bestowing wisdom. Aristotle seems to lend his authority to some such notion as that I have quoted from Pliny, when he says, "Man alone presents the phenomenon of heart-beating, because he alone is moved by hope and by expectation of what is coming." As George H. Lewes remarked, it is quite evident that Aristotle could never have held a bird in his hand. The idea, however, that eating the heart of an animal has wisdom-conferring virtue seems to underlie a very interesting Hebrew fable published by Dr. Steinschneider, in his _Alphabetum Siracidis_. The Angel of Death had demanded of God the power to slay all living things.