_Julius Caesar Scaliger_,
and _Isaac Casaubon_, and _Adrian Spigelius_ utterly deny the Being of
_Pygmies_, and look upon them as a Figment only of the Ancients, because
such little Men as they describe them to be, are no where to be met with
in all the World. The Learned _Bochartus_ tho' he esteems the
_Geranomachia_ to be a Fable, and slights it, yet thinks that what might
give the occasion to the Story of the _Pygmies_, might be the _Nubae_ or
_Nobae_; as _Isaac Vossius_ conjectures that it was those _Dwarfs_ beyond
the Fountains of the _Nile_, that _Dapper_ calls the _Mimos_, and tells
us, they kill _Elephants_ for to make a Traffick with their Teeth. But
_Job Ludolphus_ alters the Scene, and instead of _Cranes_, substitutes his
_Condors_, who do not fight the _Pygmies_, but fly away with them, and
then devour them.
Now all these Conjectures do no ways account for _Homer's Pygmies_ and
_Cranes_, they are too much forced and strain'd. Truth is always easie and
plain. In our present Case therefore I think the _Orang-Outang_, or _wild
Man_, may exactly supply the place of the _Pygmies_, and without any
violence or injury to the Story, sufficiently account for the whole
History of the _Pygmies_, but what is most apparently fabulous; for what
has been the greatest difficulty to be solved or satisfied, was their
being _Men_; for as _Gesner_ remarks (as I have already quoted him) _Sed
veterum nullus aliter de Pygmaeis scripsit, quam Homunciones esse_.
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