o the Heat of the _Climate,
Animalium, Hominumque effigies monstriferas, circa extremitates ejus
gigni, minime mirum, artifici ad formanda Corpora, effigiesque caelandas
mobilitate ignea_. But _Nature_ never formed a whole _Species_ of
_Monsters_; and 'tis not the _heat_ of the Country, but the warm and
fertile Imagination of these _Historians_, that has been more productive
of them, than _Africa_ it self; as will farther appear by what I shall
produce out of them, and particularly from the Relation that _Ctesias_
makes of the _Pygmies_.

[Footnote A: _Aristotle Hist. Animal_, lib. 8. cap. 28.]

[Footnote B: _Plin. Nat. Hist._ lib. 6. cap. 30. p.m. 741.]

I am the more willing to instance in _Ctesias_, because he tells his Story
roundly; he no ways minces it; his Invention is strong and fruitful; and
that you may not in the least mistrust him, he pawns his word, that all
that he writes, is certainly true: And so successful he has been, how
Romantick soever his Stories may appear, that they have been handed down
to us by a great many other Authors, and of Note too; tho' some at the
same time have looked upon them as mere Fables. So that for the present,
till I am better informed, and I am not over curious in it, I shall make
_Ctesias_, and the other _Indian Historians_, the _Inventors_ of the
extravagant Relations we at present have of the _Pygmies_, and not old
_Homer_. He calls them, 'tis true, from something of Resemblance of their
shape, [Greek: andres]: But these _Historians_ make them to speak the
_Indian Language_; to use the same _Laws_; and to be so considerable a
Nation, and so valiant, as that the _King_ of _India_ makes choice of them
for his _Corps de Guards_; which utterly spoils _Homer's Simile_, in
making them so little, as only to fight _Cranes_.

_Ctesias_'s Account therefore of the _Pygmies_ (as I find it in
_Photius_'s _Bibliotheca_,[A] and at the latter end of some Editions of
_Herodotus_) is this:

[Footnote A: _Photij. Bibliothec. Cod._ 72. p.m. 145.]

[Greek: Hoti en mesae tae Indikae anthropoi eisi melanes, kai kalountai
pygmaioi, tois allois homoglossoi Indois. mikroi de eisi lian; hoi
makrotatoi auton paecheon duo, hoi de pleistoi, henos haemiseos paecheos,
komaen de echousi makrotataen, mechri kai hepi ta gonata, kai eti
katoteron, kai pogona megiston panton anthropon; epeidan oun ton pogona
mega physosin, ouketi amphiennyntai ouden emation: alla tas trichas, tas
men ek taes kephalaes, o