182 History of Nature. [BOOK VII. 



Horse. He reporteth also, that they cannot sink in the 

 Water, not even if weighed down with Apparel. Damon 

 reports that there is a sort of People not unlike these in 

 Ethiopia, called Pharnaces, whose Sweat, if it chance to 

 touch a Man's Body, presently causeth him to waste away. 

 And Cicero, 1 a Writer of our own, testifieth, that all Women 

 everywhere who have double Pupils in their Eyes inflict 

 Injury with their Sight. In such manner Nature, having 

 generated in Man this custom of Wild Beasts, to feed upon 

 the Bowels of Men, hath taken Delight also to generate 

 Poisons in their whole Body, and even in the very Eyes of 

 some ; that there should be no evil in the whole World, that 

 might not be likewise found in Man. Not far from the City 

 of Rome, within the Territory of the Falisci, there are a few 

 Families called Hirpiae, which at their Yearly Sacrifice cele- 

 brated to Apollo upon the Mount Soracte, walk upon the 

 pile of Wood as it is on Fire without being burnt. 2 On 

 which account, by a perpetual Act of the Senate, they possess 

 an Immunity from War and all other Public Services. 

 Some men have certain Parts of their Bodies naturally 

 working surprising Effects. As for example, King Pyrrhus, 3 

 whose Great Toe of his Right Foot was a Remedy by its 



1 This must have been in some of the lost works of Cicero, as no 

 such opinion is found in any of his extant writings. Wern. Club. 



1 The art of treading bare-foot on burning embers, red-hot iron, &c., 

 which has its professors in the present day, is from this passage shewn to 

 be of great antiquity ; Virgil also alludes to the same when he speaks of 

 the annual festival of the Hirpi on Mount Soracte, in Etruria, where 

 Chlorcus, the priest of Cybele, thus addresses Apollo (/En. xi. 785) : 

 " O patron of Soracte's high abodes ! 

 Phoebus, the ruling power among the gods ! 

 Whom first we serve : whole woods of unctuous pine 

 Are fell'd for thee, and to thy glory shine ; 

 By thee protected^ with our naked soles, 



Through flames unsinged we march, and tread the kindled coals." 



DRYDEN. Wern. Club. 



3 According to Plutarch, in his life of Pyrrhus, the person of this king 

 was very extraordinary : " Instead of teeth in his upper jaw, he had one 

 continued bone, marked with small lines resembling the divisions of a row 



