206 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



very wide when touched with a stick, showing manifest 

 tokens of menace and defiance, though as yet they had 

 no manner of fangs that we could find, even with the 

 help of our glasses. 



To a thinking mind nothing is more wonderful than 

 that early instinct which impresses young animals with 

 the notion of the situation of their natural weapons, and 

 of using them properly in their own defence, even before 

 those weapons subsist or are formed. Thus a young 

 cock will spar at his adversary before his spurs are 

 grown ; and a calf or a lamb will push with their heads 

 before their horns are sprouted. In the same manner 

 did these young adders attempt to bite before their 

 fangs were in being. The dam however was furnished 

 with very formidable ones, which we lifted up (for they 

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

 point of our scissors. 



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 



Castration nas 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 



