Now that herein (beside the special benediction of God) he made choice of no improper Diet to keep himself fair and plump and so to excuse the Eunuch his Keeper, Physicians will not deny, who acknowledge a very nutritive and impinguating faculty in Pulses, in leguminous Food, and in several sorts of Grains and Corns, is not like to be doubted by such who consider that this was probably a great part of the Food of our Forefathers before the Floud, the Diet also of _Jacob_: and that the Romans (called therefore _Pultifagi_) fed much on Pulse for six hundred years; that they had no Bakers for that time: and their Pistours were such as, before the use of Mills, beat out and cleansed their Corn. As also that the Athletick Diet was of Pulse, _Alphiton_, _Maza_, Barley and Water; whereby they were advantaged sometimes to an exquisite state of health, and such as was not without danger. And therefore though _Daniel_ were no Eunuch, and of a more fatning and thriving temper, as some have phancied, yet was he by this kind of Diet, sufficiently maintained in a fair and carnous state of Body, and accordingly his Picture not improperly drawn, that is, not meagre and lean, like _Jeremy's_, but plump and fair, answerable to the most authentick draught of the _Vatican_, and the late German _Luther's_ Bible. The Cynicks in _Athenæus_ make iterated Courses of Lentils, and prefer that Diet before the Luxury of _Seleucus_. The present Ægyptians, who are observed by _Alpinus_ to be the fattest Nation, and Men to have breasts like Women, owe much, as he conceiveth, unto the Water of _Nile_, and their Diet of Rice, Pease, Lentils and white Cicers. The Pulse-eating Cynicks and Stoicks, are all very long livers in _Laertius_. And _Daniel_ must not be accounted of few years, who, being carried away Captive in the Reign of _Joachim_, by King _Nebuchadnezzar_, lived, by Scripture account, unto the first year of _Cyrus_. [Sidenote: Jacob's _Rods_. Gen. 30. 31.] 16. _And Jacob took Rods of green Poplar, and of the Hazel and the Chesnut Tree, and pilled white streaks in them, and made the white appear which was in the Rods_, etc. Men multiply the Philosophy of _Jacob_, who, beside the benediction of God, and the powerfull effects of imagination, raised in the Goats and Sheep from pilled and party-coloured objects, conceive that he chose out these particular Plants above any other, because he understood they had a particular virtue unto the intended effects, according unto the conception of _Georgius Venetus_.[192] [192] G. Venetus _Problem_ 200.