It would no doubt be easy to multiply instances, all equally well attested and authentic, of the transformation of witches into animals and of the damage which the women themselves have sustained through injuries inflicted on the animals.[785] But the foregoing evidence may suffice to establish the complete parallelism between witches and were-wolves in these respects.  The analogy appears to confirm the view that the reason for burning a bewitched animal alive is a belief that the witch herself is in the animal, and that by burning it you either destroy the witch completely or at least unmask her and compel her to reassume her proper human shape, in which she is naturally far less potent for mischief than when she is careering about the country in the likeness of a cat, a hare, a horse, or what not.  This principle is still indeed clearly recognized by people in Oldenburg, though, as might be expected, they do not now carry out the principle to its logical conclusion by burning the bewitched animal or person alive; instead they resort to a feeble and, it must be added, perfectly futile subterfuge dictated by a mistaken humanity or a fear of the police.  “When anything living is bewitched in a house, for example, children or animals, they burn or boil the nobler inwards of animals, especially the hearts, but also the lungs or the liver.  If animals have died, they take the inwards of one of them or of an animal of the same kind slaughtered for the purpose; but if that is not possible they take the inwards of a cock, by preference a black one.  The heart, lung, or liver is stuck all over with needles, or marked with a cross cut, or placed on the fire in a tightly closed vessel, strict silence being observed and doors and windows well shut.  When the heart boils or is reduced to ashes, the witch must appear, for during the boiling she feels the burning pain.  She either begs to be released or seeks to borrow something, for example, salt or a coal of fire, or she takes the lid off the pot, or tries to induce the person whose spell is on her to speak.  They say, too, that a woman comes with a spinning-wheel.  If it is a sheep that has died, you proceed in the same way with a tripe from its stomach and prick it with needles while it is on the boil.  Instead of boiling it, some people nail the heart to the highest rafter of the house, or lay it on the edge of the hearth, in order that it may dry up, no doubt because the same thing happens to the witch.  We may conjecture that other sympathetic means of destruction are employed against witchcraft.  The following is expressly reported:  the heart of a calf that has died is stuck all over with needles, enclosed in a bag, and thrown into flowing water before sunset."[786]

[There is the same reason for burning bewitched things; similarly by burning alive a person whose form a witch has assumed, you compel the witch to disclose herself.]