e. Or if the difference should be
but little, I see no great reason in this case, why we should be
over-nice, or scrupulous.

[Footnote A: _Strabo Geograph_. lib. 17. p.m. 565.]

As to our _Ape Pygmies_ or _Orang-Outang_ fighting the _Cranes_, this, I
think, may be easily enough made out, by what I have already observed; for
this _wild Man_ I dissected was Carnivorous, and it may be Omnivorous, at
least as much as _Man_ is; for it would eat any thing that was brought to
the Table. And if it was not their Hunger that drove them to it, their
Wantonness, it may be, would make them apt enough to rob the _Cranes_
Nests; and if they did so, no doubt but the _Cranes_ would noise enough
about it, and endeavour what they could to beat them off, which a Poet
might easily make a Fight: Tho' _Homer_ only makes use of it as a
_Simile_, in comparing the great Shouts of the _Trojans_ to the Noise of
the _Cranes_, and the Silence of the _Greeks_ to that of the _Pygmies_
when they are going to Engage, which is natural enough, and very just, and
contains nothing, but what may easily be believed; tho' upon this account
he is commonly exposed, and derided, as the Inventor of this Fable; and
that there was nothing of Truth in it, but that 'twas wholly a Fiction of
his own.

Those _Pygmies_ that _Paulus Jovius_[A] describes, tho' they dwell at a
great distance from _Africa_, and he calls them _Men_, yet are so like
_Apes_, that I cannot think them any thing else. I will give you his own
words: _Ultra Lapones_ (saith he) _in Regione inter Corum & Aquilonem
perpetua oppressa Caligine_ Pygmaeos _reperiri, aliqui eximiae fidei testes
retulerunt; qui postquam ad summum adoleverint, nostratis Pueri denum
annorum Mensuram vix excedunt. Meticulosum genus hominum, & garritu
Sermonem exprimens, adeo ut tam Simiae propinqui, quam Statura ac sensibus
ab justae Proceritatis homine remoti videantur_. Now there is this
Advantage in our _Hypothesis_, it will take in all the _Pygmies_, in any
part of the World; or wherever they are to be met with, without supposing,
as some have done, that 'twas the _Cranes_ that forced them to quit their
Quarters; and upon this account several Authors have described them in
different places: For unless we suppose the _Cranes_ so kind to them, as
to waft them over, how came we to find them often in Islands? But this is
more than can be reasonably expected from so great Enemies.

[Footnote A: _Paul. Jovij de Legatione Musc