with structural defects and malformations of the human
body which will compare favorably with even the writings of the
sixteenth century of the Christian era."

Many reasons were given for the existence of monsters, and in the
Middle Ages these were as faulty as the descriptions themselves. They
were interpreted as divinations, and were cited as forebodings and
examples of wrath, or even as glorifications of the Almighty. The
semi-human creatures were invented or imagined, and cited as the
results of bestiality and allied forms of sexual perversion prevalent
in those times. We find minute descriptions and portraits of these
impossible results of wicked practices in many of the older medical
books. According to Pare there was born in 1493, as the result of
illicit intercourse between a woman and a dog, a creature resembling in
its upper extremities its mother, while its lower extremities were the
exact counterpart of its canine father. This particular case was
believed by Bateman and others to be a precursor to the murders and
wickedness that followed in the time of Pope Alexander I. Volateranus,
Cardani, and many others cite instances of this kind. Lycosthenes says
that in the year 1110, in the bourg of Liege, there was found a
creature with the head, visage, hands, and feet of a man, and the rest
of the body like that of a pig. Pare quotes this case and gives an
illustration. Rhodiginus mentions a shepherd of Cybare by the name of
Cratain, who had connection with a female goat and impregnated her, so
that she brought forth a beast with a head resembling that of the
father, but with the lower extremities of a goat. He says that the
likeness to the father was so marked that the head-goat of the herd
recognized it, and accordingly slew the goatherd who had sinned so
unnaturally.

In the year 1547, at Cracovia, a very strange monster was born, which
lived three days. It had a head shaped like that of a man; a nose long
and hooked like an elephant's trunk; the hands and feet looking like
the web-foot of a goose; and a tail with a hook on it. It was supposed
to be a male, and was looked upon as a result of sodomy. Rueff says
that the procreation of human beings and beasts is brought about--

(1) By the natural appetite;

(2) By the provocation of nature by delight;

(3) By the attractive virtue of the matrix, which in beasts and women
is alike.

Plutarch, in his "Lesser Parallels," says that Aristonymus Ephesius,
s