PRACTICES TO OBTAIN CHILDREN 49 



The Constant Couple, written at the end of the 

 seventeenth century, puts into the mouth of one of his 

 characters the words : "I have toasted your ladyship 

 fifteen bumpers successively, and swallowed Cupids 

 like loaches in every glass." 1 Dr. Schultz, curator -of 

 the Ethnographical Museum at Leyden, received not 

 long ago from a friend who had returned from the 

 Dutch East Indies a Flute-fish (Fistularia serrata), 

 given to him by a Chinese in the Segara Anakkan, 

 or Children's Sea, a district on the south coast of 

 Java, with the assurance that if the husband of a 

 childless woman ate it, he would obtain the desired 

 offspring. 2 



A curious tale is told by the famous French traveller 

 Tavernier, of events that happened at Ahmadabad 

 when he was there about the year 1642. The wife of 

 a rich merchant named Saintidas, being childless, was 

 advised by a servant in her household to eat three 

 or four of a certain little fish. Her religion forbade 

 animal food ; but the servant overcame her scruples, 

 saying that he knew how to disguise it so well that s f ie 

 would not know what she was eating. She acco d- 

 ingly tried the remedy, and the next night she 

 conceived by her husband. Before the child was 

 born, Saintidas died, and his relations claimed the 

 inheritance. They treated her assertion that she was 

 pregnant as a lie or a joke, seeing that she had been 

 married fifteen or sixteen years without bearing. 

 The governor, however, on being appealed to, com- 

 pelled them to wait until she was delivered. When 

 this happened, they alleged that the child was ille- 



1 Southey, ComrnonpL Book, iii. 20, 75. 



2 Int. Arch. ix. 138. 



i D 



