Note 13 — Chapter V · THE BLACK ART.
Reading edition
So, among the Agariyas of Bengal, there are old women, professors of witchcraft, who stealthily instruct the young girls. “The latter are all eager to be taught, and are not considered proficient till a fine forest tree selected to be experimented on is destroyed by the potency of their charms; so that the wife a man takes to his bosom has probably done her tree, and is confident in the belief that she can, if she pleases, dispose of her husband in the same manner, if he makes himself obnoxious.”13