UPON this Chapter[48]_Pliny_ has most elegantly express’d the _Artifice_ of NATURE, together with all the _Reasons_ and _Causes_ of SIMILITUDE, to this Purpose; _viz._ “_The Cogitations of the Mind make much for the_ SIMILITUDES and RESEMBLANCES _of Children: As many other accidental Occurrences are thought to be very efficacious in the same, and that whether they come by_ Sight, Hearing, _or calling to_ Remembrance; _or by_ Imaginations _conceiv’d, and deeply apprehended in the very Act of_ Generation, _or the very Instant of_ Conception: _The inconstant_ Mind, _and wandering_ Thought, _of either_ Parent, _is justly suppos’d to be one_ Cause.” HENCE it is, that some _Children_ favour and resemble their _Fathers_, some their _Mothers_, some their _Grandfathers_, or _Mothers_, and some their _Kinsmen_: And hence also it is, that there is more Difference and Diversity in the _Rational Kind_, than in all _other Creatures_; because the Velocity of their _Thoughts_, the Celerity of their _Minds_, and the Variety of their _Dispositions_, impress a far greater _Diversity_ of various peculiar _MARKS_: While the rest of _irrational Creatures_ have their _Minds_ continually fixed (in a manner) immoveable, steady, and alike: every _One_ of them in its own peculiar Kind, and specifick Nature. INSOMUCH that the _Woman’s_ _IMAGINATION_ frequently induces a strange _Likeness_ to her INFANT; that is, in no Part, and in no Respect, favouring the FATHER. From whence it often happens, that a _Woman_ abusing her HUSBAND’_s_ Bed, and fearing perhaps to be surpriz’d by him in the _ACT_, brings forth (in due time) her _CHILD_, no ways _resembling_ the _real_ FATHER, (namely the GALLANT); but altogether _LIKE_ to the _injur’d_ HUSBAND. UPON which Case the following facetious _Epigram_ was occasionally written by the famous and celebrated Sir _Thomas More_.