Every successive age is astonished at the credulity of its predecessor; but when we remember the grave difficulties which beset the explorer in the eighteenth century, and the wild “travellers’ tales” which it was impossible either to verify or to disprove, it is easy to sympathise with the credence given to the beliefs in “Anthropophagi, and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders.” Tyson, in his _Philological Essay_, gives a list, chiefly derived from classical writers, of the “monstrous Productions,” belief in which had not altogether died out in the seventeenth century. In fact, it was not long before Tyson’s time that a distinguished naturalist had given a serious description of the mermen who lived in the sea and had their hinder parts covered with scales.[16] Tyson’s account of “Monstrous sorts of Men” is taken mainly from Strabo:— Footnote 16: v. Cunningham, p. 24. Such are the _Amukteres_ or _Arrhines_, that want Noses, and have only two holes above their Mouth; they eat all things, but they must be raw; they are short lived; the upper part of their Mouths is very prominent. The _Enotokeitai_, whose Ears reach down to their Heels, on which they lye and sleep. The _Astomoi_, that have no Mouths—a civil sort of People, that dwell about the Head of the _Ganges_; and live upon smelling to boil’d Meats and the Odours of Fruits and Flowers; they can bear no ill scent, and therefore can’t live in a Camp. The _Monommatoi_ or _Monophthalmoi_, that have but one Eye, and that in the middle of their Foreheads: they have Dogs’ Ears; their Hair stands on end, but smooth on the Breasts. The _Sternophthalmoi_, that have Eyes in their Breasts. The _Panai sphenokephaloi_ with Heads like Wedges. The _Makrokephaloi_, with great Heads. The _Huperboreoi_, who live a Thousand years. The _Okupodes_, so swift that they will out-run a Horse. The _Opisthodaktuloi_, that go with their Heels forward, and their Toes backwards. The _Makroskeleis_, the _Steganopodes_, the _Monoskeleis_, who have one Leg, but will jump a great way, and are call’d _Sciapodes_, because when they lye on their Backs, with this Leg they can keep the Sun from their bodies. [Sidenote: =Wild Men.=]