And verily this bird is not pernicious to men, for it neither destroys fruits nor plants, nor is hurtful to any tame animal. Moreover if it be (as the Egyptians fabulously pretend) that the whole kind of them is of the female sex, and that they conceive by the reception of the east wind into their bodies, as the trees do by receiving the west wind, it is most probable that very certain and sound prognostics may be made from them; whereas in other birds (there being so many rapines, flights, and pursuits about copulation) there are great disturbances and uncertainties attending them. _Question 94._ For what reason is the temple of Aesculapius placed without the city? _Solution._ Was it because they reckoned it a wholesomer kind of living without the city than within? For the Greeks have placed the edifices belonging to Aesculapius for the most part on high places, where the air is pure and clear. Or is it that they suppose this God was fetched from Epidaurus? For the temple of Aesculapius is not close by that city, but at a great distance from it. Or is it that, by a serpent that went on shore out of a trireme galley into the island and disappeared, they think the God himself intimated to them the place of building his temple? _Question 95._ Why was it ordained that they that were to live chaste should abstain from pulse? _Solution._ Did they, like the Pythagoreans, abominate beans for the causes which are alleged, and the lathyrus and erebinthus as being named from Lethe and Erebus? Or was it because they used pulse for the most part in their funeral feasts and invocations of the dead? Or rather was it because they should bring empty and slender bodies to their purifications and expiations? For pulse are windy, and cause a great deal of excrements that require purging off. Or is it because they irritate lechery, by reason of their flatulent and windy nature? _Question 96._ Why do they inflict no other punishment on Vestal Virgins, when they are defiled, than burying them alive? _Solution._ Is this the reason, because they burn the dead, and to bury her by fire who hath not preserved sacred the divine fire would be unjust? Or was it that they judged it a wicked act to cut off a person sanctified by the greatest ceremonial purification, and to lay hands on a holy woman; and therefore they contrived a machine for her to die in of herself, and let her down into a vault made under ground, where was placed a candle burning, also some bread and milk and water, and then the den was covered with earth on top? Neither by this execrable manner of devoting them are they exempt from superstition; but to this day the priests going to the place perform purgatory rites.