Vulgar Errors

Aristotle taught that women have more teeth than men.

From an account given in Genesis ii. 21 it was once generally believed that a woman has one rib more than a man.

It is a vulgar error to suppose that beetles and moles are blind.

It is a vulgar error to suppose that lowly-organised animals are as sensible of pain as the highly-organised are.

To exhaust the subject of vulgar errors would require many pages of this Dictionary. Every reader will be able to add to the few examples given above. (See Upas Tree.)

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.