Note (71) — BOOK V. (continued 2)

71. Psylli.) Pliny, from the authority of Agatharchides, says, there was a nation called Psylli, in whose bodies there was some humour destructive to serpents, by the odour of which they stupified them. They had a custom among them of exposing their children to the fiercest of these creatures, that they might try the chastity of their wives, the serpents not flying from those, that were not of their blood. Plin. lib. vii. c. 2. This account of Pliny’s has no better foundation than other vulgar errors: but we may observe, our author was too curious an enquirer into nature to give credit to such fables.