, 3G8 FABULOUS VARIETIES. 



afford us critical rules, by which the truth or falsehood of 

 any extraordinary narratives can be easily and certainly de- 

 termined. We need not Xvasteany more time on the fabu- 

 lous varieties above alluded to : yet there is one, which 

 has found believers even in our own times : I allude to the 

 men with tails, who having been again and again spoken of 

 by various authors, were defended and patronized not long 

 ago by Lord Monboddo. Not to mention, that the exis- 

 tence of a tail in man would be quite inconsistent with aU 

 the rest of his structure, and more particularly with all the 

 arrangements both of the hard and soft parts composing or 

 contained in the pelvis, we may observe that nearly all, who 

 have spoken of the homines caudati, do so, not from their 

 own observation, but from the reports or information of 

 others. While, on the other hand, they who pretend to 

 have had occular testimony of the fact, mention it in such 

 a manner, and with such circumstances, as obviously to 

 destroy their own credit ; and they differ most widely from 

 each other ev^en when speaking of th? same people*. 

 Again, the most intelligent and accurate travellers, in de- 

 scribing the same people, either make no mention of the 

 prodigy, or else characterize it as a pure fiction. Thus, 

 instead of finding the existence of any race of men with tails 

 authenticated by credible witnesses, there is no example 

 even of a single family displaying such an anomaly, although 

 there are well-known instances of families with six fingers 

 on each hand. 



* These remarks are exemplified by Blumenbach, in the statements 

 >vhich have been published concerning the tails of the Formosans: I>e G. H. 

 far. Nat. sect. iii. § 76. lie also succeeded in tracinj^ to its source the en- 

 graved representation of a man with a tail, and in proving that it was ori- 

 ginally the figure of a monkey, transmitted from one author to another, and 

 humanized a little at each step. Martini, in his version of Buffon, took a 

 plate from the Amocnitates of Lintv,eus ; who took it from Aldrovandus, 

 who took it from Gesner, who took it from a German description of the 

 Holy Land {Reyss in das Gelobte Land; Mentz, 1486), in which it re- 

 presents a quadrumanous monkey, which, with other exotic animals, was 

 seen in (he journey. This quadrumanous simia had been gradually trans- 

 formed, by those who successively copied the engravings, into a human two- 

 lianded being. Ibid, note p. 571. 



