santly and facetiously is the
business of a scholar and a wit.

QUESTION II. WHY IN AUTUMN MEN HAVE BETTER STOMACHS THAN IN OTHER
SEASONS OF THE YEAR.

GLAUCLAS, XENOCLES, LAMPRIAS, PLUTARCH, AND OTHERS.

In Eleusis, after the solemn celebration of the sacred mysteries,
Glaucias the orator entertained us at a feast; where after the rest had
done, Xenocles of Delphi, as his humor is, began to be smart upon
my brother Lamprias for his good Boeotian stomach. I in his defence
opposing Xenocles, who was an Epicurean, said, Pray, sir, do not all
place the very substance of pleasure in privation of pain and suffering?
But Lamprias, who prefers the Lyceum before the Garden, ought by his
practice to confirm Aristotle's doctrine; for he affirms that every man
hath a better stomach in the autumn than in other seasons of the year,
and gives the reason, which I cannot remember at present. So much the
better (says Glaucias), for when supper is done, we will endeavor to
discover it ourselves. That being over, Glaucias and Xenocles drew
the autumnal fruit. One said that it scoured the body, and by this
evacuation continually raised new appetites. Xenocles affirmed, that
ripe fruit had usually a pleasing, vellicating sapor, and thereby
provoked the appetite better than sauces or sweetmeats; for sick men
of a vitiated stomach usually recover it by eating fruit. But Lamprias
said, that our natural heat, the principal instrument of nutrition, in
the midst of summer is scattered and becomes rare and weak, but when
autumn comes it unites again and gathers strength, being shut in by the
ambient cold and contraction of the pores, and I for my part said: In
summer we are more thirsty and use more moisture than in other seasons;
and therefore Nature, observing the same method in all her operations,
at this change of seasons employs the contrary and makes us hungry;
and to maintain an equal temper in the body, she gives us dry food to
countervail the moisture taken in the summer. Yet none can deny but that
the food itself is a partial cause; for not only new fruit, bread, or
corn, but flesh of the same year, is better tasted than that of the
former, more forcibly provokes the guests, and enticeth them to eat on.

QUESTION III. WHICH WAS FIRST THE BIRD OR THE EGG?

PLUTARCH, ALEXANDER, SYLLA, FIRMUS, SOSSIUS SENECIO, AND OTHERS.

When upon a dream I had forborne eggs a long time, on purpose that in
an egg (as in a heart) I might make