CURIOUS CREATURES. n 



(Gulf of Sidra). In the bodies of these people, there 

 was, by nature, a certain kind of poison, which was 

 fatal to serpents, and the odour of which overpowered 

 them with torpor ; with them it was a custom to 

 expose children, immediately after their birth, to the 

 fiercest serpents, and in this manner to make proof of 

 the fidelity of their wives ; the serpents not being 

 repelled by such children as were the offspring of 

 adultery. This nation, however, was almost entirely 

 extirpated by the slaughter made of them, by the 

 Nasamones, who now occupy their territory. This 

 race, however, still survives in a few persons, who are 

 descendants of those who either took to flight, or else 

 were absent on the occasion of the battle. The Marsi, in 

 Italy, are still in possession of the same power, for which, 

 it is said, they are indebted to their origin from the 

 son of Circe, from whom they acquired it as a natural 

 quality. But the fact is, that all men possess, in their 

 bodies, a poison which acts upon serpents, and the 

 human saliva, it is said, makes them take to flight, as 

 though they had been touched with boiling water. The 

 same substance, it is said, destroys them the moment 

 it enters their throat, and more particularly so, if it 

 should be the saliva of a man who is fasting. 



Above the Nasamones (living near the Gulf of Sidrd), 

 and the Machlyae, who border upon them, are found, as 

 we learn from Calliphanes, the nation of the Androgyni, 

 a people who unite the two sexes in the same indivi- 

 dual, and alternately perform the functions of each. 

 Aristotle also states, that their right breast is that of 

 a male, the left that of a female. 



Isigonus and Nymphodorus inform us that there are, 

 in Africa, certain families of enchanters, who, by means 



