186 Miscellaneous IntelUgetice. 



This young kid, brought to Alais by acountrj-man of the 

 neighbourhood, appeared to be between fifteen days and three 

 weeks old. It had not yet began to eat. It was well formed, 

 strong, and fat, and weighed about five kilogrammes (about 

 1 1 lbs.)" 



When it was opened the butcher was astonished to observe 

 that the uterus was swelled,_and that it contained a skin, full of 

 a clear fluid, in which swam a fleshy body the size of the little 

 finger, and he made the traiture, and those around him remark 

 these circumstances. All recognised it as an embryo, and com- 

 pared it with those which they had observed many times in the 

 slaughter-houses, at the killing of sheep. They could not be 

 deceived in the position of the uterus. The butchers, without 

 being anatomists, know that organ and its uses very well, and as 

 to that which they took for a foetus, supposing it had not been so 

 well formed, as they declared, still the presence of a strange 

 body in the uterus, and its envelope full of fluid, would indicate 

 a sort of generation." 



After observing that this is more extraordinary than any 

 other known instance of monstrous generation, M. D'Hombres 

 Ferman says, " There are only two ways of explaining it: either 

 the kid and the foetus it contained must be contemporaneous, 

 dating from the same moment, when during the five months their 

 common mother carried them, and whilst the kid sucked it in- 

 creased and grew in the common way, whilst its twin, nourished 

 but imperfectly, could not be developed in its interior ; or else, 

 if this interposition of germs cannot be admitted, it must be sup- 

 posed with some naturalists, that the foetus existed before fecun- 

 dation, a series of animals being enclosed one in another 

 since the creation of the world and becoming developed in 

 succession, 8fC." Journal de Physique, July, p. 63. 



5. Prize Questions. — Royal College of Surgeons in London — 

 Jacksonian Prize. One of the Prizes for the year 1818, not 

 having been adjudicated, two Prize subjects are proposed for the 

 year 1820, viz. — Diseases of the Skin, and Diseases of the 

 Rectum. 



