J. Howell letter in Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ (1650) II 40: Your last you sent me was from Genoa, where you write that [...] ‘Husbands get their wives with child a hundred miles off’[...] In Venice there also such things are done by proxy, while the husband is abroad upon the Gallies, ther be others that shoot his gulf at home .at shoot the gulf (v.) under shoot, v.