Sir Thomas Browne, in his excellent book on vulgar errors, says that “Homer, using often similes as well to delight the ear as to illustrate his matter, compareth the Trojanes unto Cranes when they descend against the Pigmies;[15] which was more largely set out by Oppian, Juvenall and many Poets since; and being only a pleasant figment in the fountain, became a solemn story in the stream and current still among us.” He declines to give credence to the pygmies and the tales that appertain to them and says that “Julius Scaliger, a diligent enquirer, accounts thereof but as a poeticall fiction. Ulysses Aldrovandus, a most careful zoographer, in an expresse discourse thereon, concludes the story fabulous. Albertus Magnus, a man ofttimes too credulous, was herein more than dubious,” and though he quotes the statement of Pigafeta that pygmies were found in the Moluccas, and that of Olaus Magnus as to their being encountered in Greenland, he declares that “yet wanting confirmation in a matter so confirmable, their affirmation carrieth but slow perswation.” Maundevile, of course, is as fully prepared to believe in the existence of pygmies as of most other things, provided they be sufficiently outside ordinary experience. In his book he takes us “throghe the Lond of Pigmaus, wher that the folk ben of lytylle Stature, that ben but three span long; and thei ben right faire and gentylle. Thei maryen hem whan thei ben half Yere of Age, and thei lyven not but six yeer or seven at the moste, and he that lyvethe eight yeer men holden him there righte passynge olde. Thei han often times Werre with the Briddes of the Contree that thei taken and eten. This litylle folk nouther labouren in Londes ne in Vynes, but thei han grete men amonges hem, of one Stature, that tylen the Lond and labouren amonges the Vynes for hem. And of the men of our Stature han thei as grete skorne and wondre as we wolde have among us of Geauntes if thei weren among us. And alle be it that the Pygmeyes ben lytylle yet thei ben full resonable aftre here Age: connen bothen Wytt and gode and malice.” Another people of somewhat similar character that Maundevile professed to have met with in his travels were still more remarkable, for they “ne tyle not, ne labouren not the Erthe for thei eten no manere thing, and thei ben of gode colour and of faire schap aftre hire gretnesse, but the be smale as Dwerghes, but not so lytylle as ben the Pigmeyes. These men lyven be the smelle of wylde Apples, and whan thei gon ony far weve thei beren the Apples with hem. For if thei hadde lost the savour of the Apples thei scholde dyen anon.” Unfortunately he can only say of these interesting people that “thei ne ben not full resonable, but thei ben symple and bestyalle.”