Others are driven on by still more horrible fancies. Thus _Grenier_ wrapped himself in a wolf-skin, and murdered young maids that he might devour them. And, among ourselves, the desire to _change the infant into a_ _cherub_, has led the wild fanatic to the murder of the innocents! ASTR. This, I suppose, is _Lycanthropy_, or wolf-madness, on which old Burton so funnily expatiates; and to which the author of the old play of “Lingua” also points, alluding to the “Thousand vain imaginations, Making some think their heads as big as horses, Some that they’re dead, some that they’re turned to wolves.” In the woods of Limousin, in France, the belief in the power of changing from men to wolves is still prevalent. The _Loup-garoux_, or _Wehr-wolf_, was thought to have been in league with Satan. In my wanderings through Poictou, these monsters seemed to me to confine their unholy powers to midnight prowling, and the wolf-howl. Yet Marie, in the “_Lai du Bisclavaret_,” endows them with the cannibalism of the goul and the vampire: “So Garwal roams in savage pride, And hunts for blood, and feeds on men; Spreads dire destruction, far and wide, And makes the forests broad his den.” EV. The extraordinary effects of the instinct of imitation in spreading these epidemics, is but an example on the grand scale of what we see daily instances of in yawning, hiccoughing, coughing, and other similar acts, and in the propagation of _hysteria_ and _epilepsy_. Some persons, again, possess an irresistible tendency to imitate others in mere trifling things. Tissot relates a case of a female, who never could avoid doing _every thing she saw any one else do_. She was obliged to walk blindfolded in the streets; and, if you tied her hands, she experienced intolerable anguish until they were loosened. There was another girl, that was seen by Dr. Horn, at Salzburg, who sat _cross-legged_, like a hog. She had been brought up in a sty.