304 NATURAL HISTORY 



down when not used) and cut them off with the point 

 of our scissars. 



There was little room to suppose that this brood had 

 ever been in the open air before; and that they were 

 taken in for refuge, at the mouth of the dam, when she 

 perceived that danger was approaching : because then 

 probably we should have found them somewhere in the 

 neck, and not in the abdomen. 



LETTER XXXII. 



TO THE SAME. 



CASTRATION has a strange effect: it emasculates both 

 man, beast, and bird, and brings them to a near resem- 

 blance of the other sex. Thus eunuchs have smooth 

 unmuscular arms, thighs, and legs; and broad hips, 

 and beardless chins, and squeaking voices. Gelt stags 

 and bucks have hornless heads, like hinds and does. 

 Thus wethers have small horns, like ewes; and oxen 

 large bent horns, and hoarse voices when they low, like 

 cows : for bulls have short straight horns ; and though 

 they mutter and grumble in a deep tremendous tone, 

 yet they low in a shrill high key. Capons have small 

 combs and gills, and look pallid about the head like 

 pullets; they also walk without any parade, and hover 

 chickens like hens 1 . Barrow-hogs have also small 

 tusks like sows. 



Thus far it is plain that it puts a stop to the growth 

 of those appendages that are looked upon as its in- 

 signia. But the ingenious Mr. Lisle, in his book on 

 husbandry, carries it much farther ; for he says that the 

 loss of those insignia alone has sometimes a strange 

 effect : he had a boar so fierce and amorous, that, to 



1 Reaumur trained capons to nurse the chickens which he hatched by 

 artificial heat. They clucked exactly like a hen, and proved as good 

 nurses as a real mother could have been. RENNIE. 



