in sundry Indian regiments of Irregular Cavalry, and it succeeded admirably:  the animals rarely required a day’s rest.  The practice was known to the ancients.  See notes on Kadisah in Mirabeau.  The Eunuchata virgo was invented by the Lydians, according to their historian Xanthus.  Zachias (Quaest. medico-legal.) declares that the process was one of infibulation or simple sewing up the vulva; but modern experience has suggested an operation like the “spaying” of bitches, or mutilation of the womb, in modern euphuism “baby-house.”  Dr. Robert ("Journey from Delhi to Bombay, Muller’s Archiv. 1843”) speaks of a eunuch’d woman who after ovariotomy had no breasts, no pubes, no rotundities, and no desires.  The Australians practice exsection of the ovaries systematically to make women barren.  Miklucho Maclay learned from the traveller Retsch that about Lake Parapitshurie men’s urethras were split, and the girls were spayed:  the latter showing two scars in the groin.  They have flat bosoms, but feminine forms, and are slightly bearded; they mix with the men, whom they satisfy mechanically, but without enjoyment (?).  MacGillivray, of the “Rattlesnake,” saw near Cape York a woman with these scars:  she was a surdo-mute, and had probably been spayed to prevent increase.  The old Scandinavians, from Norway to Iceland, systematically gelded “sturdy vagrants” in order that they might not beget bastards.  The Hottentots before marriage used to cut off the left testicle, meaning by such semi-castration to prevent the begetting of twins.  This curious custom, mentioned by the Jesuit Tochard, Boeving, and Kolbe, is now apparently obsolete—­ at least, the traveller Fritsch did not find it.

[FN#156] Arab.  “Haram"="forbidden,” sinful.

[FN#157] In Chavis and Cazotte, who out-galland’d Galland in transmogrifying the Arabic, this is the “Story of Illage (Ai-Hajj) Mahomet and his sons; or, the Imprudent Man.”  The tale occurs in many forms and with great modifications.  See, for instance, the Gesta Romanorum “Of the miraculous recall of sinners and of the consolation which piety offers to the distressed,” the adventures of the knight Placidus, vol. ii. 99.  Charles Swan, London.  Rivington, 1824.

[FN#158] i.e.  For fear of the “eye”; see vol. i. 123 and passim.  In these days the practice is rare; but, whenever you see at Cairo an Egyptian dame daintily dressed and leading by the hand a grimy little boy whose eyes are black with flies and whose dress is torn and unclean, you see what has taken its place.  And if you would praise the brat you must not say “Oh, what a pretty boy!” but “Inshallah!”—­the Lord doth as he pleaseth.

[FN#159] The adoption of slave lads and lasses was and is still common among Moslems.

[FN#160] I have elsewhere noted this “pathetic fallacy” which is a lieu commun of Eastern folk-lore and not less frequently used in the mediaeval literature of Europe before statistics were invented.