[935] Or dog’s-headed ape, the baboon: see B. vi. c. [35], and Note [902], p. 130.
[936] Perhaps these appearances may be referred to effects of what is termed “mirage,” a phenomenon which is described by travellers in different parts of the torrid zone.—B. And in the temperate regions as well; Switzerland and the Hartz mountains, for instance.
[937] Columella, B. viii. c. 8, speaks of the fecundity of the Egyptians, but without ascribing any particular cause for it.—B.
[938] “Quinos.” The old reading was “binos,” “two” children only; but Aristotle, in reference, no doubt, to the same circumstance, says, Hist. Anim. B. vii., “One woman, at four births, gave birth to twenty children. For she brought forth five at a time, and the greater part of them were reared.”
[939] It was a very general opinion, that the waters of the Nile possess the property of promoting fecundity. Seneca mentions it as an acknowledged fact, Nat. Quæst. B. iii. c. 25.—B.
[940] There are well-authenticated accounts of four children having been produced at one birth; but, beyond this, we have no statements in which we can place much confidence. In a note by Dalechamps, we have an example of the credulity of the authors who have treated on this topic, as well modern as ancient.—B. In the recent volumes, however, of “Notes and Queries,” we find some apparently well-authenticated cases of women being delivered of five children at a birth. Nathaniel Wanley, in his “Wonders of the Little World,” also gives some apparently authentic instances of as many as five children being born at a birth: but we must be excused giving credit to the story, quoted by him, of Matilda or Margaret, Countess of Henneberg, who was said to have been delivered, on the Friday before Palm-Sunday, in 1276, “of 365 children, half sons and half daughters, with the exception of one, which was an hermaphrodite, all complete and well-fashioned, of the bigness of chickens new hatched, saith Camerarius.”
[941] From Hermaphroditus, the son of Hermes or Mercury, and Aphrodite or Venus. According to the poetic story as told by Ovid, Met. B. iv., he was united in one body, which bore the characteristics of both sexes, with the nymph Salmacis.
[942] Two cases of this description are mentioned by Livy, B. xxvii. c. 37, and B. xxxi. c. 12. In this latter passage, Livy enumerates the following prodigious births; among the Sabines, two children of doubtful sex; at Frusino, a lamb with a sow’s head; at Sinuessa, a pig with a human head; and among the Lucani, a foal with five feet. He informs us that the hermaphrodites were thrown into the sea.—B.
[943] Cuvier says, “From time to time we do see persons of this nature; and it is not long ago that such a being was exhibited in Paris, though certainly not of a nature to have been ‘in deliciis,’ at the present day.”
[944] Pliny gives further particulars of this theatre in B. xxxvi. c. 24. It was the first stone theatre erected at Rome, and was built B.C. 55, and contained 40,000 spectators.