ad borne 4 female children
prior to Chang and Eng. She afterward had twins several times, having
eventually 14 children in all. She gave no history of special
significance of the pregnancy, although she averred that the head of
one and the feet of the other were born at the same time. The twins
were both feeble at birth, and Eng continued delicate, while Chang
thrived. It was only with difficulty that their lives were saved, as
Chowpahyi, the reigning king, had a superstition that such freaks of
nature always presaged evil to the country. They were really discovered
by Robert Hunter, a British merchant at Bangkok, who in 1824 saw them
boating and stripped to the waist. He prevailed on the parents and King
Chowpahyi to allow them to go away for exhibition. They were first
taken out of the country by a certain Captain Coffin. The first
scientific description of them was given by Professor J. C. Warren, who
examined them in Boston, at the Harvard University, in 1829. At that
time Eng was 5 feet 2 inches and Chang 5 feet 1 1/2 inches in height.
They presented all the characteristics of Chinamen and wore long black
queues coiled thrice around their heads, as shown by the accompanying
illustration. After an eight-weeks' tour over the Eastern States they
went to London, arriving at that port November 20, 1829. Their tour in
France was forbidden on the same grounds as the objection to the
exhibition of Ritta-Christina, namely, the possibility of causing the
production of monsters by maternal impressions in pregnant women. After
their European tour they returned to the United States and settled down
as farmers in North Carolina, adopting the name of Bunker. When
forty-four years of age they married two sisters, English women,
twenty-six and twenty-eight years of age, respectively. Domestic
infelicity soon compelled them to keep the wives at different houses,
and they alternated weeks in visiting each wife. Chang had six children
and Eng five, all healthy and strong. In 1869 they made another trip to
Europe, ostensibly to consult the most celebrated surgeons of Great
Britain and France on the advisability of being separated. It was
stated that a feeling of antagonistic hatred after a quarrel prompted
them to seek "surgical separation," but the real cause was most likely
to replenish their depleted exchequer by renewed exhibition and
advertisement.

A most pathetic characteristic of these illustrious brothers was the
affection