of all kinds, serpents, dragons, crocodiles, tigers, wolves, foxes, swine, owls of different kinds, bats, rats and mice, frogs, locusts, spiders, and noxious insects of many kinds; also hemlock and aconite, and all kinds of poison, as well in herbs as in earths: in a word, all things which do harm, and kill men. Such things in the hells appear to the life, just, like those on earth. It is said that they appear there, but still they are not there as they are on the earth, for they are mere correspondences of evil lusts, which present themselves before others in such forms.—Now it is influx from hell which produces similar things on earth, in places where there are such matters as correspond,—such as cadaverous, putrid, excrementitious and similar matters. Hence, in places where these are, noxious herbs and animalculæ are produced; and, in the torrid zone, like things of larger size, as serpents, crocodiles, scorpions, mice, and others. For, when affections and lusts, which in themselves are spiritual, meet with homogeneous or corresponding things on earth, there is a spiritual principle which furnishes a soul, and a material which furnishes a body, and in everything spiritual there is an endeavor to clothe itself with a body. That the hells are around man, and therefore contiguous to the earth, is because the spiritual world is not in space, but is where there is a corresponding affection. But, it may be added, while noxious animals and vegetables thus originate by immediate influx from hell, yet at the same time they are also propagated mediately afterwards by eggs, seed, or grafts: the one position does not disprove the other.
"Thus, then, it may be seen, that noxious things in nature did not have their origin from the Lord, nor
