Upon which passage Thomas Farnabie, the celebrated English scholar (1575-1647) glosses thus: “He alludes to the office of the Haruspex who used to inspect entrails & intestines. Pliny says: The entrails of the toad (_Rana rubeta_), that is to say the tongue, tiny bones, gall, heart, have rare virtue for they are used in many medicines and salves. Haply he means the puddock or hop-toad, thus demonstrating that these animals are not poisonous, their entrails being completely inefficacious in confecting poisons.”[157] In 1610 Juan de Echalar, a sorcerer of Navarre, confessed at his trial before the Alcantarine inquisitor Don Alonso Becerra Holguin that he and his coven collected toads for the Sabbat, and when they presented these animals to the Devil he blessed them with his left hand, after which they were killed and cooked in a stewpot with human bones and pieces of corpses rifled from new-made graves. From this filthy hotch-potch were brewed poisons and unguents that the Devil distributed to all present with directions how to use them. By sprinkling corn with the liquid it was supposed they could blight a standing field, and also destroy flowers and fruit. A few drops let fall upon a person’s garments was believed to insure death, and a smear upon the shed or sty effectually diseased cattle. From these crude superstitions the fantastic stories of dancing toads, toads dressed _en cavalier_, and demon toads at the Sabbat were easily evolved. There is ample and continuous evidence that children, usually tender babes who were as yet unbaptized, were sacrificed at the Sabbat. These were often the witches’ own offspring, and since a witch not unseldom was the midwife or wise-woman of a village she had exceptional opportunities of stifling a child at birth as a non-Sabbatial victim to Satan. “There are no persons who can do more cunning harm to the Catholic faith than midwives,” says the _Malleus Maleficarum_, Pars I, q. xi: “_Nemo fidei catholicæ amplius nocet quam obstetrices._” The classic examples of child-sacrifice are those of Gilles de Rais (1440) and the abbé Guibourg (1680). In the process against the former one hundred and forty children are explicitly named: some authorities accept as many as eight hundred victims. Their blood, brains, and bones were used to decoct magic philtres. In the days of Guibourg the sacrifice of a babe at the impious mass was so common that he generally paid not more than a crown-piece for his victim. “Il avait acheté un écu l’enfant qui fut sacrifié à cette messe.” (“The child sacrificed at this mass he had bought for a crown.”) These abominable ceremonies were frequently performed at the instance of Madame de Montespan in order that Louis XIV should always remain faithful to her, should reject all other mistresses, repudiate his queen, and in fine raise her to the throne.[158] The most general use was to cut the throat of the child, whose blood was drained into the chalice and allowed