BOOK VII.] History of Nature. 189 



Many misshapen Creatures of various kinds are produced as 

 Monsters in the World. Claudius Ccesar writeth, that in Thes- 

 saly an Hippocentaur was born, and that it died on the very 

 same Day. And when he was Sovereign we ourselves saw the 

 like sent to him out of Egypt, preserved in Honey. Among 

 the Instances there is one of a Child in Saguntum, in the Year 

 in which that Town was destroyed by Annibal, which, as soon 

 as it was born, presently returned again into the Womb. 



CHAPTER IV. 

 Of the Change of the Sex ; l and of Double Births. 



IT is no fable, that Females may be turned to Males ; 

 for we have found it recorded in the Annals, that in the Year 

 when Pub. Licinius Crassus and C. Cassius Longinus were 

 Consuls, there was at Cassinum a Maid who, under her 

 Parents, became a Boy : and by the order of the Aruspices 

 he was conveyed to a Desert Island. Lucinius Mutianus re- 

 porteth, that himself saw at Argos a Person named Arescon, 

 who had borne the Name of Arescusa, and even had been 

 Married : but afterwards came to have a Beard, and the 

 general Properties of a Man, and thereupon married a Wife. 

 After the same sort he saw at Smyrna a Boy changed. I 

 myself was an Eye-witness, that in Africa L. Cossicius, a 



recent times, to the great disappointment of expecting friends : and the 

 laugh could only have been rendered the louder if, instead of a simple dis- 

 appointment, an egg or dormouse, an elephant or serpent had been the 

 result. By law, " Ut monstrosos partus necare parentibus liceret," that 

 " it should be lawful to parents to put to death children that were born 

 monstrous;" but Dionysius Halicarnasseus adds, that it was necessary 

 they should call witnesses to prove that they were monstrous : although 

 the latter stipulation can scarcely be reconciled with another law, which 

 gave to parents the right of life and death over their children. Accord- 

 ing to the law of Tullus Hostilius, third king of Rome, when three chil- 

 dren were born at one birth, they were to be brought up to the age of 

 maturity at the public charge. Wern. Club. 



1 Instances similar to these are scarcely uncommon, and the causes 

 are well known to anatomists. The remarks concerning the fate of twins 

 are so contrary to experience, that Pliny's error can scarcely be accounted 

 for. Wern. Club. 



