For this cause it is that I forbear to speak of so many (otherwise) valuable books and treatises of my father’s collecting, wrote either, plump upon noses——or collaterally touching them;——such for instance as _Prignitz_, now lying upon the table before me, who with infinite learning, and from the most candid and scholar-like examination of above four thousand different skulls, in upwards of twenty charnel-houses in _Silesia_, which he had rummaged——has informed us, that the mensuration and configuration of the osseous or bony parts of human noses, in any _given_ tract of country, except _Crim Tartary_, where they are all crush’d down by the thumb, so that no judgment can be formed upon them—are much nearer alike, than the world imagines;—the difference amongst them being, he says, a mere trifle, not worth taking notice of;——but that the size and jollity of every individual nose, and by which one nose ranks above another, and bears a higher price, is owing to the cartilaginous and muscular parts of it, into whose ducts and sinuses the blood and animal spirits being impell’d and driven by the warmth and force of the imagination, which is but a step from it (bating the case of idiots, whom _Prignitz_, who had lived many years in _Turky_, supposes under the more immediate tutelage of Heaven)—it so happens, and ever must, says _Prignitz_, that the excellency of the nose is in a direct arithmetical proportion to the excellency of the wearer’s fancy. It is for the same reason, that is, because ’tis all comprehended in _Slawkenbergius_, that I say nothing likewise of _Scroderus (Andrea)_ who, all the world knows, set himself to oppugn _Prignitz_ with great violence—proving it in his own way, first _logically_, and then by a series of stubborn facts, “That so far was _Prignitz_ from the truth, in affirming that the fancy begat the nose, that on the contrary—the nose begat the fancy.” —The learned suspected _Scroderus_ of an indecent sophism in this—and _Prignitz_ cried out aloud in the dispute, that _Scroderus_ had shifted the idea upon him——but _Scroderus_ went on, maintaining his thesis. My father was just balancing within himself, which of the two sides he should take in this affair; when _Ambrose Paræus_ decided it in a moment, and by overthrowing the systems, both of _Prignitz_ and _Scroderus_, drove my father out of both sides of the controversy at once. Be witness—— I don’t acquaint the learned reader—in saying it, I mention it only to shew the learned, I know the fact myself—— That this _Ambrose Paræus_ was chief surgeon and nose-mender to _Francis_ the ninth of _France_, and in high credit with him and the two preceding, or succeeding kings (I know not which)—and that, except in the slip he made in his story of _Taliacotius_’s noses, and his manner of setting them on—he was esteemed by the whole college of physicians at that time, as more knowing in matters of noses, than any one who had ever taken them in hand.