fs; they exhibited much talent in
all their performances, which were given for several years and quite
recently in all the large cities of the United States. They showed
themselves to be worthy rivals for honors in the class of
entertainments known as burlesques. As near as could be ascertained,
partly from the fact that they all spoke German fluently and originally
gave their performance entirely in German, they were collected from the
German and Austrian Empires.

The "Princess Topaze" was born near Paris in 1879. According to a
recent report she is perfectly formed and is intelligent and vivacious.
She is 23 1/2 inches tall and weighs 14 pounds. Her parents were of
normal stature.

Not long since the papers recorded the death of Lucia Zarete, a Mexican
girl, whose exact proportions were never definitely known; but there is
no doubt that she was the smallest midget ever exhibited In this
country. Her exhibitor made a fortune with her and her salary was among
the highest paid to modern "freaks."

Miss H. Moritz, an American dwarf, at the age of twenty weighed 36
pounds and was only 22 inches tall.

Precocious development is characterized by a hasty growth of the
subject, who at an early period of life attains the dimensions of an
adult. In some of these instances the anomaly is associated with
precocious puberty, and after acquiring the adult growth at an early
age there is an apparent cessation of the development. In adult life
the individual shows no distinguishing characters.

The first to be considered will be those cases, sometimes called
"man-boys," characterized by early puberty and extraordinary
development in infancy. Histories of remarkable children have been
transmitted from the time of Vespasian. We read in the "Natural
History" of Pliny that in Salamis, Euthimedes had a son who grew to 3
Roman cubits (4 1/2 feet) in three years; he was said to have little
wit, a dull mind, and a slow and heavy gait; his voice was manly, and
he died at three of general debility. Phlegon says that Craterus, the
brother of King Antigonus, was an infant, a young man, a mature man, an
old man, and married and begot children all in the space of seven
years. It is said that King Louis II of Hungary was born so long before
his time that he had no skin; in his second year he was crowned, in his
tenth year he succeeded, in his fourteenth year he had a complete
beard, in his fifteenth he was married, in his eighteenth he had