jS TRAVELS IN UPPER. 



tinced some well-informed persons of its real na- 

 ture. It is part of the femur (thigh-bone) of a 

 large quadruped ; I sent a drawing of it to BufFon. 



Another cabinet of curiosities, but much richer, 

 was in the possession of M. Barbaroux. Without 

 being of great compass, it contained some very va- 

 luable articles ; and the proprietor, who united 

 politeness to science, shewed it to strangers with a 

 very amiable complaisance. This little museum 

 contained several beautiful shells and curious pe- 

 trifactions ; a great number of medals were ar- 

 ranged in a cabinet of a very ingenious form. 

 Amidst the productions of art, you viewed there 

 with pleasure, a very large figured pearl, a beautiful 

 head painted in enamel in clar-obscuro^ and a great 

 medallion of crystal, engraved by Michael An- 

 gelo, I must not terminate this enumeration of 

 rarities, without making mention of one of those 

 phenomena, commonly denominated the sportings 

 of Nature, as if Nature could blunder or condescend 

 to trifle, and which are rather proofs of her power 

 and of the prodigious variety of the means which 

 she is pleased to employ. It was the portrait which 

 I saw in the collection of the chevalier Dcspennes, 

 charge des affairs from France, of a little girl, on 

 whose forehead was a third eye, much larger than 

 the other two, and which was itself equivalent to 

 two, as it had a double iris and central spot ; 



the 



