ingers to the same ordeal, as it
was found to improve the voice; comedians and public dancers were also
restrained from ruining their talents by the means of infibulation. In
an old Amsterdam edition of Locke's "Essay on the Extent of the Human
Understanding," there is a quotation from the voyages of Baumgarten,
wherein he states having seen in Egypt a devout dervish seated in a
perfect state of nature among the sand-hillocks, who was regarded as a
most holy and chaste man for the reason that he did not associate with
his own kind, but only with the animals. As this was by no means an
uncommon case, it led the Greek monks, in Greece and Asia Minor, to
resort to every expedient to protect their chastity; in some of the
monasteries not only were the monks muzzled by the process of
infibulation, but they even had rules that excluded all females, either
human or animal, from within their convent,--a habit that still prevails
among many of the convents of the Orient to this day,--that on Mount
Athos especially, omitting the infibulation of the ancients.

Readers living in the climates of extreme ranges and of seasonal change
cannot understand the physical temptations that beset mortals in certain
climates, any more than they can imagine the faultless condition of the
climate itself. The subject of climatic influences will be more fully
discussed further on; but climate, as a factor of habits and usages in
one part of the world, that are incomprehensible to those living in
others, plays a part that is but little appreciated or understood;
whether it be the question of diet, dress, or custom, climate exerts its
influence in no uncertain manner. As Sulpicius Severus remarked to the
Greek monks, when they accused the Gaulish monks with voracity and
gluttony, "That which you of Greece consider as superfluous, the climate
of Gaul renders into a positive necessity." So of all physical needs and
passions,--they are subject to a similar law. Those who have read Canon
Kingsley's small work on the "Hermits of Asia, Africa, and Europe" will
appreciate the above remarks; and it may be incidentally mentioned that
his description of the climate that is common to the hilly country
bordering on the eastern half of the Mediterranean Sea gives as vivid
and as graphic a description of the physical condition of the climate
and of its effects as can well be written. It occurs in the life of the
hermit Hilarion, and the description given relates to