Again, While herein we commend the modesty, we condemn the wisdom of nature: for that prone position we make her contrive unto the Woman, were best agreeable unto the Man, in whom the secret parts are very anteriour and more discoverable in a supine and upward posture. And therefore _Scaliger_ declining this reason, hath recurred unto another from the difference of parts in both sexes; _Quod ventre vasto sunt mulieres plenoque intestinis, itaque minus impletur et subsidet, inanior maribus quibus nates præponderant_: If so, then Men with great bellies will float downward, and only _Callipygæ_, and Women largely composed behind, upward. But _Anatomists_ observe, that to make the larger cavity for the Infant, the hanch bones in Women, and consequently the parts appendant are more protuberant then they are in Men. They who ascribe the cause unto the breasts of Women, take not away the doubt; for they resolve not why children float downward, who are included in that sex, though not in the reason alleadged. But hereof we cease to discourse, lest we undertake to afford a reason of the [1]golden tooth, that is, to invent or assign a cause when we remain unsatisfied or unassured of the effect. [1] _Of the cause whereof much dispute was made, and at last proved an imposture._ That a _Mare_ will sooner drown then a _Horse_, though commonly opinion'd, is not I fear experienced: nor is the same observed, in the drowning of _Whelps_ and _Kitlins_. But that a Man cannot shut or open his eyes under water, easie experiment may convict. Whether Cripples and mutilated Persons, who have lost the greatest part of their thighs, will not sink but float, their lungs being abler to waft up their bodies, which are in others overpoised by the hinder legs; we have not made experiment. Thus much we observe, that Animals drown downwards, and the same is observable in _Frogs_, when the hinder legs are cut off. But in the air most seem to perish headlong from high places; however _Vulcan_ thrown from Heaven, be made to fall on his feet. CHAPTER VII Concerning Weight. That Men weigh heavier dead then alive, if experiment hath not failed us, we cannot reasonably grant. For though the trial hereof cannot so well be made on the body of Man, nor will the difference be sensible in the abate of scruples and dragms, yet can we not confirm the same in lesser Animals, from whence the inference is good; and the affirmative of _Pliny_ saith, that it is true in all. For exactly weighing and strangling a _Chicken_ in the Scales; upon an immediate ponderation, we could discover no sensible difference in weight; but suffering it to lie eight or ten hours, untill it grew perfectly cold, it weighed most sensibly lighter; the like we attempted, and verified in _Mice_, and performed their trials in Scales, that would turn upon the eighth or tenth part of a grain.