Chap. 3.] MARVELLOUS BIRTHS. 135 



twenty days' journey from the ocean. These people are called 

 Menisrnini ; they live on the milk of the animal which we call 

 cynocephalus, 4 and rear large flocks of these creatures, taking 

 care to kill the males, except such as they may preserve for the 

 purpose of breeding. In the deserts of Africa, men are fre- 

 quently seen to all appearance, and then vanish in an instant. 5 



Nature, in her ingenuity, has created all these, marvels in the 

 human race, with others of a similar nature, as so many amuse- 

 ments to herself, though they appear miraculous to us. But 

 who is there that can enumerate all the things that she brings 

 to pass each day, I may almost say each hour ? Asa striking 

 evidence of her power, let it be sufficient for me to have cited 

 whole nations in the list of her prodigies. 



Let us now proceed to mention some other particulars con- 

 nected with Man, the truth of which is universally admitted. 



CHAP. 3. MARVELLOUS BIRTHS. 



(3.) That threechildren are sometimes produced at one birth, is 

 a well-known fact ; the case, for instance, of the Horatii and 

 the Curiatii. Where a greater number of children than this is 

 produced at one birth, it is looked upon as portentous, except, 

 indeed, in Egypt, where the water of the riyjer/Kile, which is 

 used for drink, is a promoter of fecundity. 6 Very recently, 

 towards the close of the reign of the^Emperor Augustus, now 

 deified, a certain woman of the lower orders, at Ostia, whose 

 name was Fausta, brought into the world, at one birth, two 

 male children and two females, a presage, no doubt, of the fa- 

 mine which shortly after took place. We find it stated, also, 

 that in Peloponnesus, a woman was delivered of five 7 chil- 

 dren at a birth four successive times, and that the greater part 

 of all these children survived. Trogus informs us, that in 



4 Or dog's-Ueaded ape, the baboon : see B. vi. c. 35, and Note 70 

 p. 130. 



5 Perhaps these appearances may be referred to effects of what is termed 

 " mirage," a phenomenon which is described by travellers in different parts 

 of the torrid zone. B. And in the temperate regions as well ; Switzer- 

 land and the Hartz mountains, for instance. 



6 Columella, B. viii. c. 8, speaks of the fecundity of the Egyptians, but 

 without ascribing any particular cause for it. B. 



7 " Quinos." The old reading was " binos," " two " children only > 

 but Aristotle, in reference, no doubt, to the same circumstance, says, Hist. 



