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was the stake; and cremation, the burning of the dead body, is considered to be one of the few ways, and perhaps the most efficacious manner, in which vampirism can be stamped out and brought to an end. That witches were hanged in England is a fact which has often been commented upon with some surprise, and persons who travelled in France and Italy were inclined to advise the same punishment should be inflicted at home as in all other countries. It was felt that unless the body were utterly consumed it might well prove that they had not stamped out the noxious thing. In Scotland, in 1649, when Lady Pittadro, who was incarcerated upon a charge of sorcery, died before her trial, her body was buried in the usual way. But considerable excitement followed and there were instant complaints to those in high places since the Scotch General Assembly considered that the body should have been burned and the following entry occurs among the records: “Concerning the matter of the buriall of the Lady Pittadro, who, being under a great scandall of witchcraft, and bein incarcerat in the Tolbuith of this burgh during her triall before the Justice, died in prison. The Commission of the General Assembly, having considered the report of the Committee appointed for that purpose, Doe give their advyse to the Presbyterie of Dumferling to show their dislike of that fact of the buriall of the Lady Pittadro, in respect of the manner and place, and that the said Presbyterie may labour to make the persons who hes buried her sensible of their offence in so doeing; and some of the persons who buried hir, being personallie present, are desired by the Comission to show themselvis to the Presbyterie sensible of their miscarriage therein.”^[3] Again in 1652 some persons who had been resident in France and who probably had followed the famous prosecutions at Louviers expressed their surprise that in England the gallows and not the stake was the penalty for this species of crime. In the Louviers case, a horrid record of diabolism, demoniac masses, lust and blasphemy, on 21 August, 1647, Thomas Boullé, a notorious Satanist, was burnt alive in the market-square at Rouen, and what is very notable the body of Mathurin Picard who had died five years before, and who had been buried near the choir grille in the chapel of the Franciscan nuns which was so fearfully haunted, was disinterred, being found (so it is said)