Another Argument made use of is: that those reputed Hermaphrodites have Beards like Men and Hair on some of their Breasts. This can make but very little towards proving a Masculine Nature in them; for supposing some of these Fricatrices to have Hair _&c._ as above, yet there are many Women with Hair between their Breasts and on their Chins, who deserve no such Repute; one I have often seen whose Arms to the Fingers Ends were covered with long black Hair, having a Beard also on her Chin, who was the Wife of a Man of Fortune by whom she had eight or nine Children. I have also, at the _Hôtel de Dieu_ at _Paris_, seen a Body open’d that was hairy in the same Manner, without any Sign of a Masculine Nature whatsoever. Again, several Women advanced in Years have great Quantities of Hair on the Chin, but the Number of these as well as the former, among Women, are but few; and those that are so ought no more to have any such Character ascribed to them, on that account, than that many Men who want Beards should be said to partake of a Feminine Nature, and want the Power of exercising the Functions of a Man; but daily Experience shews us these are as prolifick, and produce as many Signs of Virility, as any others whatsoever. There have been many Reports of Persons who, in a certain Process of Time, have been said to change their Sex; and many[33] Authors have handed such Accounts with great Confidence to the rest of Mankind, which, like a Contagion, has infected them into a Belief of the Matter; a brief View of the Source of such Rumours may be of Use here, to shew how credulous some have been in receiving Stories of strange Things, and how indolent and supine in finding out the Truth of such. 1. The First Origin or Reason of this Notion then appears in the Account of Dr _Allen_’s Hermaphrodite, _viz._ that the Girl was changed into a young Man; which is so clearly laid down already in his Story, that here needs no Repetition. 2. The Second appears to be taken from actual Male Children, who were sometimes mistaken for Females at their Birth, only from the Penis’s being as it were shrunk into a Chink, and the Testes also not yet fallen into the Scrotum, which remaining so for some time till (a proper Sense of the Sex beginning to dawn in them) the Parts begin to swell, and be protruded and extended towards a natural Size. Thus several Children have been, through Ignorance, baptized, habited, and reputed Maidens; and, upon the aforesaid Protrusion of the Parts, said to change their Sex and be transformed into Men; which many Writers have taken Pains to maintain.