rpents, and the like, which
from time to time have been reported; even at the present day there are
people who devoutly believe that they have seen horrible and impossible
demons in the sea. Pare describes and pictures a monster, at Rome, on
November 3, 1520, with the upper portion of a child apparently about
five or six years old, and the lower part and ears of a fish-like
animal. He also pictures a sea-devil in the same chapter, together with
other gruesome examples of the power of imagination.

Early Teratology.--Besides such cases as the foregoing, we find the
medieval writers report likely instances of terata, as, for instance,
Rhodiginus, who speaks of a monster in Italy with two heads and two
bodies; Lycosthenes saw a double monster, both components of which
slept at the same time; he also says this creature took its food and
drink simultaneously in its two mouths. Even Saint Augustine says that
he knew of a child born in the Orient who, from the belly up, was in
all parts double.

The first evidences of a step toward classification and definite
reasoning in regard to the causation of monstrosities were evinced by
Ambroise Pare in the sixteenth century, and though his ideas are crude
and some of his phenomena impossible, yet many of his facts and
arguments are worthy of consideration. Pare attributed the cause of
anomalies of excess to an excessive quantity of semen, and anomalies of
default to deficiency of the same fluid. He has collected many
instances of double terata from reliable sources, but has interspersed
his collection with accounts of some hideous and impossible creatures,
such as are illustrated in the accompanying figure, which shows a
creature that was born shortly after a battle of Louis XII, in 1512; it
had the wings, crest, and lower extremity of a bird and a human head
and trunk; besides, it was an hermaphrodite, and had an extra eye in
the knee. Another illustration represents a monstrous head found in an
egg, said to have been sent for examination to King Charles at Metz in
1569. It represented the face and visage of a man, with small living
serpents taking the place of beard and hair. So credulous were people
at this time that even a man so well informed as Pare believed in the
possibility of these last two, or at least represented them as facts.
At this time were also reported double hermaphroditic terata, seemingly
without latter-day analogues. Rhodiginus speaks of a two-headed monster
b