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ume; and among the latter, women whose breasts hung down like sacks below their knees, and, in some instances, even to the ground. The extravagance of these narrations ought to be sufficient to destroy their credit with all persons but tolerably acquainted with the natural history of the globe. Some families in every nation, and the inhabitants of particular districts of different countries have ears extended beyond the usual proportion which they bear to other parts of the head. In Spain the Biscayans are said to have them much larger than the people of the other provinces of that kingdom. Some savage tribes are known to stretch their ears by weights appended to them ; which they esteem highly ornamental. And it is a common custom among our American indians, from a like false taste of beauty, to cut the rims of their ears, in a very artificial manner, into narrow strips, round which they wrap thin plates of shining metal, which weigh them down to the shoulders. But, such sheets of ear as were formerly spoken of by many travellers and even by Pliny, have not been discovered by recent and more accurate observers, and may safely be pronounced to have no existence. 

A like remark may be applied to those narrations, the greater part of which one writer of travels has 


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borrowed from another, which have been so long vended by ignorance, or imposture, and received by credulity, concerning the protracted and pendulous breasts of the women of many uncultivated tribes, especially of Africa. The whole origin of those tales is probably to be found in the effect which poverty, great hardships, and exhausting toils, naturally have not only on savages but on poor women in the lowest classes of civilized society, to render their breasts, in time, flaccid and thin. This flaccidity, especially in advanced life, and after they have been much drawn by the suckling of children, does occasion their depending much lowers than the breasts of women who have enjoyed plenty and ease. Ignorant travellers, who have not been accustomed to the view of naked savages, smitten with the love of astonishing their countrymen with a marvellous tale, or infected with the prejudices of little minds, which delight to depreciate and misrepresent whatever is seen in foreign countries, have given these exaggerated pictures of the length of the breasts of African females.* That climate, or other causes, in the benefi- 

* Even Ireland not two centuries ago, when, however, it was rarely visited by English travellers, and was regarded with

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