6 CURIOUS CREATURES. 



It seems a pity that there are none of them now living, 

 and that, consequent upon never having seen them, we 

 are apt to imagine that they never existed, but were 

 simply the creatures of the writer's brain. They were 

 articles of belief until comparatively recent times, and 





were familiar in Queen Elizabeth's time, as we learn from 

 Othello's defence of himself (Act i. sc. 3) : 



" And of the Cannibals that each other eat, 

 The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads 

 Do grow beneath their shoulders." 



They were thoroughly believed in, a century or two 



