NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
149 
To a thinking mind nothing is more wonderful than that early- 
instinct which impresses young animals with a 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.* 
LETTEE XXXII. 
TO THE SAME. 
Castration has a strange effect : it emasculates 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 beardless chins, and squeal^ing 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. Barrow-hogs have also small tusks 
like sows. 
Thus far it is plain that the deprivation of masculine vigour puts a 
stop to the growth of those parts or 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 on the ability itself : he had a boar so 
fierce and venereous, that, to prevent mischief, orders were given for 
his tusks to be broken off. No sooner had the beast suffered this 
injury than his powers forsook him, and he neglected those females to 
whom before he was passionately attached, and from whom no fences 
would restrain him. 
* See Letter XVII. , First Series, to Mr. Pennant, p. 43, which should be turned 
to and read along with this. 
