35 6 Dr - Garthshore’s Remarks on 
relation of this kind, when Ambrose Parey, a very honeft 
though credulous man, tells, that in his time, in the parifh of 
Sceaux, near Chambellay between Sarte and Maine, the mo- 
ther of the then living lord of the noble houfe of Malde- 
meure had, in the firft year of her marriage, brought forth 
twins, in the fecond triplets, in the third four, in the fourth 
five, and in the fifth year fix children at one birth, of which 
labour fhe died ; and when he adds, that of thefe lafi fix one is 
yet alive, and is now Lord of Maldemeure, how can we dis- 
believe this circumftance ? This ftory may very pofiibly be in- 
accurately {bated, yet the whole cannot be a fi&iori, as it was 
publifhed among the very people, and in the age when it hap- 
pened, and never has been fince contradicted fo far as we 
know. Though the wonderful regularity of the progrefs gives an 
appearance of fable to the whole, yet we mud believe the 
thing to be poflible : and that this then exifting lord might be 
the only one of the fix who lived long enough to be born at 
the full time,* in a mature hate ; the whole, or molt of the 
other five, as we have fometimes feen in cafes of twins, hav- 
ing been born as dead abortions, which had never arrived to 
a bulk fuflicient to interfere with his growth. 
4 i 
I leave the learned to pay what degree of credit they pleafe 
to the wonderful relations we read of the extreme fertility of 
the women of Egypt, Arabia, and other warm countries, as 
recorded by Aristotle, by Pliny, and by Albucasis, where 
three, four, five, and fix children are faid to have been fre- 
quently born at once, and the greateft part of tliefe reared to 
maturity; and will only fay, that though a late traveller M. 
Savary gives ample teftimony of the extieme general ferti- 
lity of Egypt in all vegetable and animal productions, and par- 
ticularly 
