188 History of Nature. [BooK VII. 



doubt of the Famine that ensued. In Peloponnesus also 

 there is found a Woman, who brought forth at four Births 

 twenty Children, and the greater Part of them lived. 

 Trogus is the authority, that in Egypt a Woman hath borne 

 seven at a Birth. It falleth out, moreover, that there come 

 into the World Children of both Sexes in one, whom we call 

 Hermaphrodites. In old Time they were known by the 

 Name of Androgyni, and reputed for Prodigies ; but now 

 Men take Pleasure in them. Pompey the Great, in the 

 Theatre which he adorned with remarkable Ornaments, as 

 well for the subject as the most exquisite Hand of the great 

 Artists, among other Images represented Eutichtt, a Woman 

 of Tralles, who after she had borne thirty Births, was carried 

 by twenty of her Children to the Funeral Fire for to be 

 burnt. AlcippZ was delivered of an Elephant, and that 

 certainly was a monstrous Token. Also in the beginning of 

 the Marsian War a Bondwoman brought forth a Serpent. 1 



1 We know how prone vulgar ignorance or superstition is to compare 

 an ordinary monstrous birth to some fancied animal. Such is within the 

 knowledge of living observers. But what shall we say to the following ? 

 " Lemnius tells us of a monster, that a certain woman was delivered of, 

 and to whom he himself was physician and present at the sight, which at 

 the appearing of the day filled all the chamber with roaring and crying, 

 running all about to find some hole to creep into-; but the women at the 

 length stifled and smothered it with pillows." Wanleys Wonders of the 

 Little World. And from the same authority : " Johannes Naborowsky, 

 a noble Polonian, and my great friend, (says Bartholini, "Hist. Anat.") 

 told me at Basil, that he had seen in his country two little fishes without 

 scales, which were brought forth by a woman, and as soon as they came 

 out of her womb did swim in the water as other fish." The story given 

 by Wormius, concerning the birth of an egg from a woman (and of which 

 he gives a figure in his " Museum Wormianum,") is illustrated, and per- 

 haps explained, as may all the others on the same principle, by another 

 given in Wanley's book, of a woman " of good quality, who had made 

 great preparations for her lying-in, but in the last month her distension 

 subsided, and it is confessed that she plumped herself up with a stuffing of 

 garments. However, the time must come at last, and she was delivered 

 of a creature, very like unto a dormouse of the greater size, which to the 

 amazement of the women who were present, with marvellous celerity 

 sought out and found a hole in the chamber, into which it crept and was 

 never seen after." Instances somewhat similar have occurred in very 



