,0 CURIOUS CREATURES. 



with the wild beasts. We learn from Bceton, whose 

 duty it was to take the measurements of the routes 

 of Alexander the Great, that this people cannot breathe 

 in any climate except their own, for which reason it is 

 impossible to take them before any of the neighbouring 

 kings ; nor could any of them be brought before 

 Alexander himself. 



The Anthropophagi, whom we have previously men- 

 tioned as dwelling ten days' journey beyond the Borys- 

 thenes (the Dneiper), according to the account of 

 Isogonus of Nicaea, were in the habit of drinking out 

 of human skulls, and placing the scalps, with the hair 

 attached, upon their breasts, like so many napkins. 

 The same author relates that there is, in Albania, a 

 certain race of men, whose eyes are of a sea-green 

 colour, and who have white hair from their earliest 

 childhood (sl/binos), and that these people see better 

 in the night than in the day. He states also that the 

 Sauromatae, who dwell ten days' journey beyond the 

 Borysthenes, only take food every other day. 



Crates of Pergamus relates, that there formerly 

 existed in the vicinity of Parium, in the Hellespont 

 (Camanar, a toivn of Asia Minor), a race of men whom 

 he calls Ophiogenes, and that by their touch they were 

 able to cure those who had been stung by serpents, 

 extracting the poison by the mere imposition of the 

 hand. Varro tells us, that there are still a few indi- 

 viduals in that district, whose saliva effectually cures 

 the stings of serpents. The same, too, was the case 

 with the tribe of the Psylli, in Africa, according to the 

 account of Agatharcides ; these people received their 

 name from Psyllus, one of their kings, whose tomb is 

 in existence, in the district of the Greater Syrtes 



