The perfumes employed by the professors of the art had each a special significance, and were offered to some planet to form a link with the earth. A mixture of saffron, amber, musk, cloves and incense, together with the brain of an eagle and the blood of a cock, was offered to the Sun. The white poppy and camphor burnt in the head of a frog, with the eyes of a bull and the blood of a goose, were dedicated to the Moon; while to Mars, sulphur was mixed with hellebore and euphorbium, together with the blood of a black cat and the brain of a crow, and then burnt. One can imagine the horrible odour that would be caused by burning such articles as these; and, as the columns of smoke ascended, the half-stupefied and scared spectator fancied he saw the forms of writhing demons in the air. Very curious properties were attributed to certain articles when thrown on live coals. Thus, if thunder and rain were required, the liver of a chameleon was said to produce it; while the gall of a cuttle-fish burnt with roses and aloes-wood was all that was necessary to induce an earthquake. By burning coriander, parsley, hemlock, liquor of black poppy, giant fennel, red sandal-wood and henbane, almost any number of demons could be raised. Sorcerers of this class were called tempest-raisers. With the witchcraft practised largely by women in mediæval times, we have not much to do; although belief in its influence was widespread during the middle ages. To bewitch an individual was to cause him gradually to die a mysterious death. The process commenced at first with great secrecy, by modelling a figure of the intended victim in wax or clay. This having been done, a swallow was killed, and the heart placed under the right arm of the figure and the liver under the left. The effigy was next pricked all over with new needles, each prick being accompanied by the most terrible imprecations against the victim. Another method was to make the figure of earth taken from a graveyard and mixed with dead bones. Certain mystic signs were then inscribed on it, which were said eventually to cause the death of the victim. So general did the practice of witchcraft become that no class of society was safe from accusation and suspicion, thousands perishing by the faggot and torture. From the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, supernatural beliefs exerted a great influence on the people. One of the most celebrated trials of the time was that of the Duchess of Gloucester, who was accused of bewitching Henry VI. It transpired at the trial that she had instructed a priest, named Bolingbroke who practised necromancy, to bewitch the king; a sorceress named Marie Gardimain being also implicated. An effigy of the king in wax was discovered half-melted in front of a fire of dry plants, which had been gathered by moonlight in a graveyard. Bolingbroke the necromancer was hanged, Gardimain burnt, and the Duchess of Gloucester condemned to imprisonment for life.