AUSENSES. 
115 
A woman of Milan, named Calcagni, had seven sons. The two 
elder had brown hair and black eyes ; the three next had white 
skins, white hair, and red eyes ; the two last resembled the two 
elder. It was said that this woman, during the three pregnancies 
that produced the Albinos, had a continual and immoderate appetite 
for milk, which she took in great quantities ; but that when she 
was with child of the other four children, she had no such desire. 
It is not, however, ascertained that this preternatural appetite was 
not itself the effect of a certain heat or internal disease, which 
destroyed the rete mucosum in the children before tiiey were born. 
The Albinos of Chamouni are also the offspring of parents with dark 
skins and blue eyes. They have three sisters by the same father 
and mother, who are also brunettes. One of them, that I saw, had 
the eyes of a dark brown, and the hair alniost black. They are said, 
however, to be all afflicted with a weakness of sight. Should they 
have offspring, it would be curious to observe how the eyes of the 
children will be formed. The experiment would be particularly deci- 
cive, if they were married to men like themselves. But this faulty 
conformation seems to be more rare among women than among men; 
for the four of Milan, the Chamouni, the one described by Mauper- 
tuis, the one by Helvetius, and almost all the instances of these 
singular productions, have been of the male sex. It is known, how- 
ever, that there are races of men and women affected by this disease, 
and that these races perpetuate themselves, in Guinea, in Java, at 
Panama, &c. Upon the whole, this degeneration does not seem to 
be owing to the air of the mountains, for though I have traversed the 
greatest part of the Alps and the other mountains of Europe, these 
are the only individuals of the kind that ever I met with.” 
Ausenses. 
The Ausenses were a people of Libya, described by Herodotus, 
book iv. 180. They dwelt round the lake Tritonis, and were sepa- 
rated from the Machlyes by the river Triton. They were distin- 
guished from their neighbours by the fashion of their hair, the Mach- 
iyes nourishing it behind, the Ausenses in front. One of their 
remarkable customs was, a festival celebrated annually to Minerva, 
whom they called a native goddess. On this anniversary the young 
girls divided themselves into two opposite parties, and fought with 
sticks and stones so desperately, that some of them often died of 
their wounds : such, however, as did so were deemed unchaste. 
Before this skirmish, they dressed the most beautiful of their girls in 
Grecian armour, and drew her round the lake in a chariot. They 
stated that the Minerva whom they worshipped was the daughter of 
Neptune and the lake Tritonis ; and that, having had some quarrel 
with her father Neptune, she gave herself up to Jupiter, who adopted 
her. Their women were in common. The men had a general meet- 
ing every three months, at which the adults w^ere introduced ; and as 
each resembled any particular man, he claimed that individual as his 
father. 
