Thaumaturgia; Or, Elucidations of the Marvellous

by Oxonian

Paul Bucconi, a Sicilian nobleman, treated this notion of the eyes and tongues of serpents as a mere vulgar error; and maintains that they either constitute a particular species of stone produced in the earth, or in the stones of the island of Malta, as in their matrix; or that they are nothing more than the petrified teeth of some marine fish; which is also the opinion of Fabius Columna, Nicholas Steno and other physicians and anatomists.

It seems to this noble author that the glossopetrae should be classed in the animal kingdom, because, being burnt, they are changed into cinders as bones, before they are reduced into a calx or ashes, whilst calcined stones are immediately reduced into a calx. He further says, that the roots of the glossopetrae are often found broken in different ways, which is an evident argument that they have not been produced by nature, in the place they are digged out of, because nature forms other fossils, figured entirely in their matrix, without any hurt or mutilation. Add to this, that the substance is different in different parts of the glossopetrae; solid at the point, less solid at the root, compact at the surface, porous and fibrous in the interior: besides, the polished surface, contrary to the custom of nature, which forms no stone, whether common or precious, is polished; and, lastly, the figure that varies different ways, as well as the size, being found great, broad, triangular, narrow, small, very small, pyramidal, straight, curved before, behind, to the right and to the left, in form of a saw with small teeth, furnished with great jags or notches, and frequently absolutely pyramidal without notches; all these particulars favour his opinion. But, as he thence believes he has proved that the glossopetrae should not be classed amongst stones, so also what he has said may prove that they are the natural teeth of those fishes, which are called, by lithographers, lamia, aquila, requiem, (shark) etc. and therefore there scarce remains any reason for a further doubt on this head.

There are representations of curiosities, which we shall give an account of from the Ephemerides of the Curious. It is customary to see at Batavia, in the island of Java, the figure of serpents impressed on the shells of eggs, Andrew Cleyerus, a naturalist of considerable note, says, that when he was at Batavia in 1679, he had seen himself, on the 14th of September, an egg newly laid by a hen, of the ordinary size, but representing very exactly, towards the summit of the other part of the shell, the figure of a serpent and all its parts, not only the lineaments of the serpent were marked on the surface, but the three dimensions of the body were as sensible as if they had been engraved by an able sculptor, or impressed on wax, plaister or some other like matter. One could see very plainly the head, ears, and a cloven tongue starting out of the throat; the eyes were sparkling and resplendent, and represented so perfectly the interior and exterior of the parts of the eye, with their natural colours, that they seemed to behold with astonishment the eyes even of the spectators. To account for this phenomenon, it may be supposed that, the hen being near laying, a serpent presented itself to her sight, and that her imagination, struck thereby, impressed the figure of the serpent on the egg that was ready to press out of the ovarium.

An egg equally wonderful, was laid by a hen at Rome on the 14th. of December, 1680. The famous comet that appeared then on the head of Andromeda, with other stars, were seen represented on its shell. Sebastian Scheffer says, that he had seen an egg with the representation of an eclipse on it. Signor Magliabecchi, in his letter to the academy of the Curious, on the 20th. of October 1682, has these words; "Last month I had sent me from Rome, a drawing of an egg found at Tivoli, with the impression of the sun and the transparent comet with a twisted tail."

There are also representations of Indian nuts, or small cocos, with the head of an ape. The nut has been exactly engraved in the Ephemerides of the Curious, both as to size and form, and covered with its shell, as expressed there by cyphers and other figures which represent the same nut stripped of its covering, and exhibiting the head of an ape. This nut seems pretty much like the foreign fruit described by Clusius, Exoticorum lib. a, which John Bauhin (Hist. Plant. Universal Lib. 3) retaining the description of Clusius, calls, "a nut resembling the areca," and which C. Bauhin (Pinac. lib. II, sect. 6) calls, the fruit of the fourteenth of Palm-tree, that bears nuts, or a foreign fruit of the same sort as the areca.

This fruit with its shell, is, as Clusius says, an inch and a half in length, but is somewhat more than an inch thick. Its shell or membraneous covering, is about the thickness of the blade of a knife, and outwardly of an ash colour mixed with brown. Clusius was in the right to say, that the shell of this nut was formed of several fibrous parts, but those fibres resemble rather those of the shell of a coco, than the fibrous parts of the back of the areca nut. He, moreover, has very properly observed, that this shell is armed, at its lower part, with a double calyx and that the opposite part terminates in a point; but it is necessary to observe, that this point is not formed by the prolongation of the shell, as the figure he has given of it seems to specify; but that from the middle of the upper part of the fruit, there juts out a sort of small needle.

The shell being taken off, the nut is found to be hard, ligneous, oblong, of unequal surface, furrowed, and of a chesnut yellow. One of its extremities is roundish, and the other, by the reunion and prolongation of three sorts of tubercles, terminates in a point; those protuberances being so formed, that the middlemost placed between the two others, has the appearance of a nose, and the two lateral protuberances resemble flat lips. On each side of that which forms what we call the nose, a small hole or nook is perceived, capable of containing a pea; but does not penetrate deep, and is surrounded with black filaments, sometimes like eye-brows and eyelashes, so that the nut on that side resembles an ape or a hare.

This lusus naturae, or sport of nature, has a very pretty effect, but is oftener found in stones than other substances. A great variety of such rare and singular productions of nature may be seen at the British Museum: but nothing can be more extraordinary in this respect than what is related concerning the agate of Pyrrhus, which represented, naturally, Apollo holding a lyre, with the nine muses distinguished each by their attributes. In all probability, there is great exaggeration in this fact, for we see nothing of the kind that comes near this perfection. However, it is said, that, at Pisa, in the church of St. John, there is seen, on a stone, an old hermit perfectly painted by nature, sitting near a rivulet, and holding a bell in his hand; and that, in the temple of St. Sophia, at Constantinople, there is to be seen, on a white sacred marble, an image of St. John the Baptist, cloaked with a camel's skin, but so far defective that nature has given him but one foot.

There is an instance in the Mercury of France, for July 1730, of some curious sports of nature on insects. The rector of St. James at Land, within a league of Rennes, found in the month of March, 1730, in the church-yard, a species of butterfly, about two inches long, and half-an-inch broad, having on its head the figure of a death's-head, of the length of one nail, and perfectly imitating those that are represented on the church ornaments which are used for the office of the dead. Two large wings were spotted like a pall, and the whole body covered with a down, or black hair, diversified with black and yellow, bearing some resemblance to yellow.

These freaks of nature are equally extended to animate as to inanimate bodies; and the human species, as well as the brute creation, affords numerous specimens, not only of redundance and deficiency in her work, but a variety of other phenomena not well understood. The march of intellect, however, it is to be hoped, will be as successful in this instance, as in obliterating the hobgoblins of astrologers and quacks who so long have ruled the destiny and health of their less sagacious fellow-creatures;—and when the public shall become persuaded of the advantages which science may derive from occurrences similar to those we shall enumerate in the next chapter, it will be more disposed to offer them to the consideration of scientific men.