62 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



considerable lengths to satisfy this love of the mar- 

 vellous ; in the middle ages writers not a few dis- 

 coursed of dog-headed men, of pigmies, of "the 

 anthropophagi, and men whose heads do grow beneath 

 their shoulders," while no country fair in this present 

 year of grace would be considered by its patrons at . 

 all up to date unless it included a giant and a dwarf, 

 together with a two-headed calf or some such 

 monstrosity. 



To deal at all comprehensively in the limits of an 

 article with a subject so far-reaching is a manifest 

 impossibility. We propose, therefore, to touch upon 

 but a few mediaeval examples, being more especially 



struck by the impossibility of producing anything 

 really original in the way of monsters. The Chinese, 

 perhaps, have come as near to it as any people, 

 in their strange grotesques, but all the various 

 modifications, no matter how weird and bizarre they 

 may be, have no absolute originality ; they are 

 merely the combination, addition, suppression, or 

 exaggeration of various natural forms, or possibly 

 owe their wonder to a mere alteration of scale. 

 Thus the chimcera slain by Bellerophon had the 

 head and body of a lion and a tail like a serpent, 

 while from its back rose the head of a goat ; while 

 another well-known combination is the human head 



Fi S- 37- 



Fig. 38. 



inspired to do so by a book open before us, the 

 " Historia Monstrorum " of Aldrovandus. With one 

 exception (Fig. 37), we have derived our illustrations 

 from this work. The book in question is of folio 

 size and full of engravings of the quaintest description ; 

 it was published at Bologna in 1642 and is one of a 

 series of books on natural (or in this special case 

 unnatural) history, written by this old author and 

 published sometimes at Bologna, sometimes at Venice, 

 sometimes at Frankfort. As all alike were written in 

 Latin and appealed to the cultured of all Europe, the 

 actual place of their production was a matter of but 

 little moment. 



In looking into the whole matter one is at once 



and body and the piscine extremities that go to build up 

 a mermaid. As examples of addition, the unicorn is 

 but a horse plus a horn ; while the cyclops, with his 

 one eye, or the headless men, are instances of mon- 

 strosity springing from suppression. The Fanesii, a 

 tribe said to live in the far north, were credited with 

 ears so long and pendulous that they could wrap 

 themselves up in them, a charming arrangement of 

 Nature to supply the overall or great coat that the 

 climatic conditions rendered so necessary ; while the 

 author of " Guerino Meschino " writes of Indians 

 with feet so large that they raised them over their 

 heads to avoid sunstroke, another interesting illus- 

 tration of the adaptability of Nature to the needs of 



