Nature, in her sportive indulgence to variety, gives to some women a degree of resemblance to men, which, for want of sufficient examination, has, for ages, obtained a belief of that chimæra of Hermaphrodites. The supernatural size of a part which is commonly a very small one of the female organ of generation, and upon which M. TRONCHIN has given a learned dissertation, constitutes the whole wonder, as the odious abuse of that part does the whole ill. Vain, perhaps, of this sort of resemblance, there have been some of these imperfect women, who have usurped the functions of virility. The Greeks call them _Tribades_. They are a sort of monstrous beings too frequent, and which seduce the young of the fair sex with the more facility, for their having in their favor, that reason for loving eunuchs, which Juvenal imputes to some women, _Quod abortivo non est opus._ There are not those consequences to be dreaded, the impossibility of hiding which betrays such as have had complaisances or weaknesses in the natural way. Of this circumstance the _Tribad_ takes the advantage to draw the young of her sex into the crime, without her innocent accomplices even suspecting the danger: and yet it is not less in that way than in other means of pollutions; the consequences are equally pernicious. All these deviations from the course of nature lead to weaknesses, languor, pain, and death. This last kind of lewdness deserves the more attention, for that it is, in our days, grown frequent, and that it would not be difficult to find more than one _Laufella_, more than one _Medullina_, who, like those Roman heroines in obscenity, think they should slight those extraordinary gifts of nature, if they did not pervert them to the confusion of the arbitrary distinction of the sex to which they were born. It is well known, that, some years ago, at a certain court, a lady was so much in love with a young girl to her taste, that she conceived a violent jealousy against a celebrated man of Literature, who had conceived a liking for her. But it is time to have done with these melancholic instances of the depravity and turpitude of human nature; I am mortified and sick of describing them. I will not here then accumulate a greater number of facts: those which remain for me to specify, will naturally find their place elsewhere. I shall next pass to an examination of the causes of the evils proceeding from this practice, after first concluding this Section with the following general observation.