Just as "loathly" reptiles, the snake, the lizard, and the toad, stand in close relation to the witch, so plants growing in suggestive places or notoriously poison-bearing are especially connected with her. Hemlock, mandrake, henbane, deadly nightshade--or moonshade, as it was sometimes called--saffron, poplar-leaves, all avoided by the common folk, are held in high esteem by Satan's servants for their use in the concoction of love-philtres and other noxious brews. For the brewing of potions a cauldron is a matter of course, and the mixtures popularly supposed to have been brewed in it were enough to have given it an evil reputation for all time. The enumeration of their ingredients is unpleasantly suggestive, even to the unbeliever, and the credulous may well have shuddered at such a mixture as: Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder's fork and blindworm's sting, Lizard's leg and howlet's wing, Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat and slips of yew, Finger of birth-strangled babe, &c., &c. It is true that a Macbeth was not to be catered for every day, and simpler effects could have been obtained by less complicated, though perhaps not less unappetising means. Of all these insignia and attributes of her office the most important, as the most characteristic, were her "familiars" or imps. In mediæval real life, just as in modern fairy-lore, the witch's possession of a cat--or other animal, however harmless it might seem--was proof positive of her guilt. Without her familiar, indeed, she could scarcely have claimed the powers attributed to her, for, whatever its form, it was the ever-present reminder of her contract with their common master, and in many cases the channel through which his commands and the means for their carrying out were communicated to her. The infinite variations of form and kind of these same "imps," as set out in the proceedings at the trials, bear strong testimony of the wild imaginations possessed by our forefathers or the Devil, as we may prefer to believe. Thus Margaret White, in the Fairfax case just referred to, had for familiar a deformed creature with many feet, sooty in hue and rough-haired, being of name unknown. Her daughter, who resembled her in all things, with the addition of "impudency and lewd behaviour," had a white cat spotted with black. Jennie Dibble had a black cat called Gibbe, "who hath attended her above 40 yeares." All these imps, whatever their shape, obtained their nourishment by sucking their mistress's blood, leaving marks upon her body, which formed deadly evidence against her at her trial. Nor was there any hope of cheating justice by giving these devil's marks commonplace forms, for they were recognised even when made, by the Devil's cunning, to appear like moles, birth-marks, or even flea-bites!