He was a Jew and circumcised; for they have some few stirps of Jews yet remaining among them, whom they leave to their own religion.
The principal characters of the story, belonging to the stirps Muciana, are purely imaginary.
Mucianus is the cognomen, the surname, the name of the immediate family (stirps or familia).
But we have only to suppose a distinctstirps for each of the classes, and that the developments took place along parallel lines, in order to harmonize the facts with the hypothesis.
The idea of a distinct stirps or germ for each great class of animals and plants seems to me to destroy an essential feature of the hypothesis.
