In Lancashire, where there are, perhaps, more superstitions connected with this subject than in any other county of England, we find numerous traditions relating to the evil actions of the so-called witches in former years, many of which have become household stories among the peasants. At the present day the good housewife puts a hot iron into the cream during the process of churning to expel the witch from the churn; and dough in preparation for the baker is protected by being marked with the figure of a cross. In some places a "lucky stone"--a stone with a hole through it--is worn as an amulet, and crossed straws and knives laid on the floor are held in high repute. A belief, too, which was once very prevalent, and even still lingers on, was that the power of evil ceased as soon as blood was drawn from the witch. An instance of this superstition occurred some years ago in a Cornish village, when a man was summoned before the bench of magistrates and fined for having assaulted the plaintiff and scratched her with a pin. Not many years ago a young girl in delicate health living in a village near Exeter was thought to have been bewitched by an old woman of that place, and, according to the general opinion, the only chance of curing her was an application of the witch's blood. Consequently the girl's friends laid wait one day for the poor old woman, and scratching her with a nail till the blood flowed, collected the blood. This they carried home, and smeared the girl with it in the hope that it would insure recovery. Curious to say, she finally got well, an event which, it is needless to add, was attributed to this charm. It is still thought by many that witchcraft, like hydrophobia, is contagious, and that the person, if only slightly scratched by a witch, rapidly becomes one. The faculty of witchcraft is also said to be hereditary, and in some places families are pointed out as possessing this peculiarity. Again, witches are supposed to have the power of changing their shape and resuming it again at will, a notion which was very popular in past years, the cat's and the toad's being the forms they were thought to assume. Hence the appearance of a toad on the doorstep is taken as a certain sign that the house is under evil influence, and the poor reptile is often subjected to some cruel death. Cats, also, were formerly exposed to rough usage, one method being to enclose them with a quantity of soot in wooden bottles suspended on a line. The person who succeeded in beating out the bottom of the bottle as he run under it and yet escaping the contents was the hero of the sport, a practice to which Shakespeare alludes in _Much Ado about Nothing_, where Benedick says:--