only the human offender, but the beast, is to be put to death.[16] It is prescribed in the Vendîdâd that, if a mad dog which bites without barking, smite a sheep or wound a man, "the dog shall pay for the wound of the wounded as for wilful murder."[17] Plato had undoubtedly borrowed from Attic custom or law the idea which underlies the following regulation in his 'Laws':--"If a beast of burden or other animal cause the death of any one, except in the case of anything of that kind happening to a competitor in the public contests, the kinsman of the deceased shall prosecute the slayer for murder, and the wardens of the country, such, and so many as the kinsman appoint, shall try the cause, and let the beast when condemned be slain by them, and let them cast it beyond the borders."[18] In various European countries animals have been judicially sentenced to death, and publicly executed, in retribution for injuries inflicted by them. Advocates were assigned to defend the accused animals, and the whole proceedings, trial, sentence, and execution, were conducted with all the strictest formalities of justice.[19] These proceedings seem to have been particularly common from the end of the thirteenth till the seventeenth century; the last case in France occurred as late as 1845.[20] Not only domestic animals, but even wild ones, were thus put on trial.[21] "In 1565 the Arlesians asked for the expulsion of the grasshoppers. The case came before the Tribunal de l'Officialité, and Maître Marin was assigned to the insects as counsel. He defended his clients with much zeal. Since the accused had been created, he argued that they were justified in eating what was necessary to them. The opposite counsel cited the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and sundry other animals {255} mentioned in Scripture, as having incurred severe penalties. The grasshoppers got the worst of it, and were ordered to quit the territory, with a threat of anathematisation from the altar, to be repeated till the last of them had obeyed the sentence of the honourable court."[22] From an earlier period we have records of maledictions and excommunications of vermin and obnoxious insects. In 1120, a bishop of Laon is reported to have excommunicated the caterpillars which were ravaging his diocese, with the same formula as that employed the previous year by the Council of Rheims in cursing the priests who persisted in marrying in spite of the canons.[23] Such maledictions and excommunications, however, were probably regarded rather as magical means of expulsion than as punishments.[24] Not long ago, when swarms of locusts ravaged the gardens of Tangier, the Shereef of Wazzan expelled the injurious animals by spitting into the mouth of one of them. [Footnote 11: Casati, _Ten Years in Equatoria_, i. 176.] [Footnote 12: Polack, _Manners and Customs of the New Zealanders_, i. 240.] [Footnote 13: von Amira, _Thierstrafen und Thierprocesse_, p. 30.]