Herein therefore to speak compendiously, we first presume to affirm that from strict enquiry, we cannot maintain the evulsion or biting off any parts, and this is declarable from the best and most professed Writers: for though some have made use hereof in a Moral or Tropical way, yet have the professed Discoursers by silence deserted, or by experience rejected this assertion. Thus was it in ancient times discovered, and experimentally refuted by one _Sestius_ a Physitian, as it stands related by _Pliny_; by _Dioscorides_, who plainly affirms that this tradition is false; by the discoveries of Modern Authors, who have expressly discoursed hereon, as _Aldrovandus_, _Mathiolus_, _Gesnerus_, _Bellonius_; by _Olaus Magnus_, _Peter Martyr_, and others, who have described the manner of their Venations in _America_; they generally omitting this way of their escape, and have delivered several other, by which they are daily taken. The original of the conceit was probably Hieroglyphical, which after became Mythological unto the Greeks, and so set down by _Æsop_; and by process of tradition, stole into a total verity, which was but partially true, that is in its covert sense and Morality. Now why they placed this invention upon the Bever (beside the Medicable and Merchantable commodity of _Castoreum_, or parts conceived to be bitten away) might be the sagacity and wisdom of that Animal, which from the works it performs, and especially its Artifice in building, is very strange, and surely not to be matched by any other. Omitted by _Plutarch_, _De solertia Animalium_, but might have much advantaged the drift of that Discourse. If therefore any affirm a wise man should demean himself like the Bever, who to escape with his life, contemneth the loss of his genitals, that is in case of extremity, not strictly to endeavour the preservation of all, but to sit down in the enjoyment of the greater good, though with the detriment and hazard of the lesser; we may hereby apprehend a real and useful Truth. In this latitude of belief, we are content to receive the Fable of _Hippomanes_, who redeemed his life with the loss of a Golden Ball; and whether true or false, we reject not the Tragœdy of _Absyrtus_, and the dispersion of his Members by _Medea_, to perplex the pursuit of her Father. But if any shall positively affirm this act, and cannot believe the Moral, unless he also credit the Fable; he is surely greedy of delusion, and will hardly avoid deception in theories of this Nature. The Error therefore and Alogy in this opinion, is worse then in the last; that is, not to receive Figures for Realities, but expect a verity in Apologues; and believe, as serious affirmations, confessed and studied Fables.