230 NATURAL HISTORY 



Thoro 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 HONOURABLE DAINES BARRINGTON. 



ASTRATION has a strange effect; it emas- 

 culates both man, beast, and bird, and brings 

 them to a near resemblance of the other sex. 

 Thus, eunuchs have smooth unmuscular arms, 

 thighs, and legs, and broad hips, and beard- 

 less 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 insignia. 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 prevent mischief, orders were given 



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. ED. 



