Talk:.NDI.MjIzNDM
in which are fishes put according to the number of the Monks of that place. When any one of them happen to be sick, there is a fish seen to float and swim above water half dead, and if the monk shall die, the fish a few days before dies too. In some parks in Wales, death lights (or corps candles as they call them) are seen in the night going from the house where some body will shortly die, and passing into the churchyard. Of this my dearly honored and never to be forgotten friend Mr. Richard Bascher has given an account in his book about witchcrafts lately published. What to make of such things except they be the effects of some old enchantments, I know not. Nor what natural reason to assign for that which I find amongst the observations of the Imperial Academy for the year 1687, that in an orchard where there are choice Damasien plumbs, the master of the family being sick if a Quartan Ague, whilst he continued very ill, four of his plumb trees instead of Damasiens brought forth a vile sort of yellow plumbs: but recovering his health the next year the tree did (as formerly) bear Damasiens again. But when after that he fell into a fatal dropsy on those trees were seen not Damasiens but another sort of fruit. The [Sa_r] author (I) gives instances of which he had the certain knowledge, concerning apple trees and pear trees that the fruit of them would on on a sudden wither, as if they had been baked in an oven, when the owners of them were mortally sick. It is no less strange (m) that in the illustrious Electoral house of the Brandenburg, before the death of some one of the family, feminine specters appear (n) and often in the houses of great men, voices and visions from the invisible world have been the harbingers of death. When any heir in the worshipful family of the Breretons in Cheshire is near his death, there are seen in a pool adjoyning bodies of [heirs?] swimming for certain days together. On which learned Cambden(o) hath this note. These and such like things are done either by the holy [_u__lar] angels of men or else by the Devils, who by Gods permission mightily [_he_] their power in this inferious [works?]
[Margin notes:] (L) ~ Germ. Ephem. An 16 .p.379. (m) Heinkelius de Obsessis p. 86 (n) Camerarius Cant. 1. c. 73 Cardan de vrem[?] varietate lib.16.cap.93
(o) in his Brit- tania p.609