anything, but the following night she would go, and he would hear of it. On Thursday night she loosened the cows in Arileod byre, let in the calves, and did much mischief. WITCHES AS HARES. In addition to the above tales, in which this transformation has been mentioned, the following may be given as further illustrations of the superstition. A young man, in the island of Lismore, was out shooting. When near Balnagown Loch, he started a hare, and fired at it. The animal gave an unearthly scream, and it then for the first time occurred to the young man that there were no hares in Lismore. He threw away his gun in terror, and fled home. Next day he came back for the gun, and heard that a reputed witch of the neighbourhood was laid up with a broken leg. Ever after the figure of this woman encountered him and gave him severe thrashings. This preyed on his mind, and he never came to any good. He proved brooding, idle, and useless. A Manxman, who was in Tiree a few years ago, told the following story. A party of sportsmen, engaged in coursing, were at a loss for a hare. An old woman told her grandson to go to them, tell them they would get a hare at a certain spot, and get half-a-crown for himself. The boy went, got his half-crown, and guided the sportsmen to the spot his grandmother had indicated. When the hare started he cried, “Run, granny, run!” The hare made straight for the old woman’s house, the dogs lost sight of it at the back of the house, and the old woman was found sitting at the fireside. In Wigtonshire a hare ran up the chimney, and a suspected witch near hand was found with burnt feet. WITCHES AS CATS. The association of witches with cats is of great antiquity. In the legends of Greece and Rome, we are told of a woman, who had been changed into a cat, being chosen as priestess by Hecate, the goddess of sorcery and magic power, and of Hecate herself, when the gods were forced to hide themselves in animals, taking refuge in the shape of a cat. The association probably arose not so much from cats being the frequent, almost invariable, companions of the poor old women accused of witchcraft, as from the savage character of the animal itself. Its noiseless and stealthy motions, its persevering watchfulness, its extraordinary agility and tenacity of life, its diabolical caterwauling, prowling habits, deceitful spring, and the luminous appearance of its eyes in the dark, would alone suffice to procure it the name of unearthly; but when infuriated, glaring, bristling, and spitting, it forms a vivid representation of a perfect demon. In the Highlands, it was not, as in the witchcraft of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, looked upon as the familiar or attendant imp of the witch, but merely as an animal, whose form witches frequently assumed.