textbooks for the training of the aspirants to the priesthood. Confining ourselves to the birth-omens[16], the first question that arises is whether the signs entered are based on actual occurrences or are fanciful. In the case of many entries, as will presently be made evident, the anomalies noted rest upon =actual= observation, but with the desire of the priests to embrace in their collections all possible contingencies so as to be prepared for any question that might at any time arise, a large number of signs were entered which the diviners thought _might_ occur. In other words, in order to be on the safe side the diviners allowed their fancy free rein and registered many things that we can positively say never did occur and never could occur[17]. With the help of hand-books on human and animal pathology, we can without difficulty distinguish between two classes. Thus, twins being regarded as significant and triplets even more so, the priests did not stop at this point but provided for cases when four, five six up to eight and more infants were born at one time[18]. Again in regard to animals, inasmuch as bitches and sows may throw a litter of ten and even more, the priests in their collections carried the number up to thirty[19] which is, of course, out of the question. For sheep and goats the number was extended up to ten, though it probably never happened that more than triplets were ever born to an ewe or to a mother-goat. Even twins are rare, and I am told that there are few authenticated cases of triplets. Malformations among infants and the young of animals were of course plentiful, but here too the anomalies and monstrosities are not as numerous and varied as were entered in the handbooks of the Babylonian and Assyrian diviners. The factor of fancy to which I have referred enters even more largely in the entries of many actual malformations, through the assumption of a more or less fanciful resemblance of some feature or of some part of an infant or of the young of an animal with the features or parts of some animal. An excess number of limbs--three legs or four arms in the case of an infant, or five or six legs in the case of a lamb, puppy, pig or foal, or two heads--is not uncommon. On this basis the priests entered cases of excess legs and arms and heads up to nine and more[20]; and similarly in regard to ears and eyes. That, however, despite the largely fanciful character of the entries in the omen texts, these collections not only rested on a firm basis of actual observation, but served a practical purpose is shown by the examples that we have of official reports made by the =bârû=-priests of human and animal anomalies, with the interpretations attached that represent quotations from the collections[21]. A report of this kind in reference to an animal monstrosity reads in part as follows[22]: