VOL. XLI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS, 385 



Some Reflections on Generation, and on Monsters, with a description of some 

 particular Monsters. By Daniel de Superville, Physician to the Margrave of 

 Brandenburg- Bareith, i^c. Translated from the French by Phil. Hen. Zoll- 

 man, F. R. S. N" 456, p. 294. 



On the subject of generation, this author espouses Leuenhoeck's theory j 

 according to which he thinks monstrous births may be easily accounted for. He 

 mentions having in his collection a pig, that had 8 feet; the 2 bodies, that were 

 separated, reunited themselves by the spina dorsi below the diaphragma, and 

 had but one visible neck supporting a head, larger than it should be, on which 

 there appeared 4 ears, 3 eyes, and the snout seemed double. He had also the 

 head of a foal, which was double, and had 3 eyes. He had a Turkish duck, 

 which was double, the 2 bodies being joined by the breast; each body had 2 

 wings, and 2 legs ; but they had only 1 neck with 1 head. He had a chicken, 

 which had a second rump fixed to its breast, with the 2 legs, and 2 paws. He 

 had a frog, which besides its 4 paws, had a 5th as well formed as the others, 

 which came out at the right shoulder. The production of all these monsters 

 that are double, or have superfluous members, may very well be occasioned, he 

 thinks, by 2 animalcula entering into the same egg; they touch, they close, 

 they unite, they croud each other; the parts of the weakest, being too much 

 crouded, cannot extend nor display themselves; so they vanish, as it were, 

 so much the easier as they are extremely tender, and without any sensible con- 

 sistency. 



It is not more difficult to find plausible reasons for imperfect monsters, or 

 that have an odd conformity, as to the whole, or as to some of the members. 

 He had the foetus of a sheep, which had no nose; the part where the nostrils 

 should be, seemed to be flayed, and the 2 eyes were one by the side of the 

 other. On the forehead there was a small trunk, of about 14 inch long, and 

 pierced at the end by 2 nostrils. He had another, which had but 1 eye, in the 

 middle of the forehead. He had a human foetus, of about 7 months, which 

 had no mark of the sex, and instead of the legs there was a bag that ran to a 

 point, the extremity of which was cartilaginous; in that bag there was a bone 

 3 inches long, covered with a muscular flesh; it was articulated with the os 

 sacrum ; the osea innominata was wanting, and below the anus, which was on 

 the middle of the os sacrum, there was a small tail like that of a pig. 



When he was at Stetin in Pomerania, about 12 or J 4 years before, a mid- 

 wife came to tell him, that a Serjeant's wife was delivered of 3 dead children, 

 one of which had no head. He immediately went, and observed, that these 



VOL. VIII. 3 D 



