fearful object, heard or seen, she endangers her child, and spoils the temperature of it; for the strange imagination of a woman works effectually upon her infant, that as Baptista Porta proves, Physiog. caelestis l. 5. c. 2, she leaves a mark upon it, which is most especially seen in such as prodigiously long for such and such meats, the child will love those meats, saith Fernelius, and be addicted to like humours:  [1340]"if a great-bellied woman see a hare, her child will often have a harelip,” as we call it.  Garcaeus, de Judiciis geniturarum, cap. 33, hath a memorable example of one Thomas Nickell, born in the city of Brandeburg, 1551, [1341]"that went reeling and staggering all the days of his life, as if he would fall to the ground, because his mother being great with child saw a drunken man reeling in the street.”  Such another I find in Martin Wenrichius, com. de ortu monstrorum, c. 17, I saw (saith he) at Wittenberg, in Germany, a citizen that looked like a carcass; I asked him the cause, he replied, [1342]"His mother, when she bore him in her womb, saw a carcass by chance, and was so sore affrighted with it, that ex eo foetus ei assimilatus, from a ghastly impression the child was like it.”

So many several ways are we plagued and punished for our father’s defaults; insomuch that as Fernelius truly saith, [1343]"It is the greatest part of our felicity to be well born, and it were happy for human kind, if only such parents as are sound of body and mind should be suffered to marry.”  An husbandman will sow none but the best and choicest seed upon his land, he will not rear a bull or a horse, except he be right shapen in all parts, or permit him to cover a mare, except he be well assured of his breed; we make choice of the best rams for our sheep, rear the neatest kine, and keep the best dogs, Quanto id diligentius in procreandis liberis observandum?  And how careful then should we be in begetting of our children?  In former times some [1344]countries have been so chary in this behalf, so stern, that if a child were crooked or deformed in body or mind, they made him away; so did the Indians of old by the relation of Curtius, and many other well-governed commonwealths, according to the discipline of those times.  Heretofore in Scotland, saith [1345]Hect.  Boethius, “if any were visited with the falling sickness, madness, gout, leprosy, or any such dangerous disease, which was likely to be propagated from the father to the son, he was instantly gelded; a woman kept from all company of men; and if by chance having some such disease, she were found to be with child, she with her brood were buried alive:”  and this was done for the common good, lest the whole nation should be injured or corrupted.  A severe doom you will say, and not to be used amongst Christians, yet more to be looked into than it is.  For now by our too much facility in this kind, in giving way for all to marry that will, too much liberty and indulgence