Taking all the foregoing circumstances into account, there seems to me little ground for the erection of any strong objection to the alleged fact--extraordinary as it is--of ten children having been brought forth at one time; or, to the hardly less interesting coincidence, that one of them is still living. I cannot but add, that if the contemporary notice of this extraordinary birth in the _Leeds Mercury_ of 1781 should not be admitted as good evidence for the fact, it does, at least, negative the presumptive value of any objection {65} derived from the silence of the writer in the _Philosophical Transactions_ six years afterwards; strange as such silence assuredly appears. After all, the question occurs: What has become of the bodies said to have been preserved? As all parties concur in naming "old Mr. Staniforth" as the accoucheur in attendance on Mrs. Birch; and as that gentleman has been dead many years, I called upon his eldest surviving pupil, Mr. Nicholson, surgeon, to ask him whether, in conversation, or among the preparations in the surgery of his worthy master, he had ever met with any illustration of the parturition in question? He replied that he had not. It may not, perhaps, be out of place here to mention that the above-named Mr. Nicholson, surgeon, himself delivered a poor woman of five children, on the 10th of February, 1829, at Handsworth Woodhouse, near Sheffield. This case was even more remarkable than that which gave occasion to the paper which was read before the Royal Society in 1787, inasmuch as not only were four of the children born alive, but three of them lived to be baptized. N.D. Sheffield, Jan. 13. 1851. * * * * * SHAKSPEARE'S USE OF "CAPTIOUS." (Vol. ii., p. 354.) In _All's Well that Ends Well_, Act I. Sc. 3., Helena says to the Countess, speaking of her love for Bertram,-- "I know I love in vain; strive against hope; Yet, in this captious and intenible sieve, I still pour in the waters of my love, And lack not to lose still." It is not without hesitation that I venture to oppose MR. SINGER on a point on which he is so well entitled to give an opinion. But I cannot help thinking that MR. SINGER'S explanation, besides being somewhat too refined and recondite, is less applicable to the general sense and drift of the passage than that of Steevens, which Malone and Mr. Collier have adopted. What I think wanting to Steevens' interpretation, is an increase, if I may so express myself, of intensity. He takes the word, I conceive, in its right bearing, but does not give it all the requisite force. I should suggest that it means not merely "_recipient_, capable of receiving," but, to coin a word, _captatious_, eager or greedy to receive, absorbing; as we say _avidum mare_, or a _greedy gulf_. The Latin analogous to it in this sense would be, not _capax_, or MR. SINGER'S _captiosus_, but _captax_, or _captabundus_; neither of which words, however, occurs.