CHAPTER XLIII.
MONSTROUS BIRTHS.
The attachment existing betwixt animals of different kinds is an undoubted fact. Dogs have been known to take kittens under their protection during the absence, or after the death of the parent cat. Most people who have been at the Jardin des Plantes, must have noticed the affection evinced by the lion for the little dog that shares his cage. Two horses and an ass having fed from the same rack during a period of fourteen years, on the death of the ass, his two companions refused food and died. These inclinations are probably the result of the familiarity with mankind produced by domestication, which destroys their natural instincts.
Parrots, starlings, jays, and magpies, do not talk in their wild state; nor would a dog, or squirrel, of its free will, have turned a wheel.
In a Norman farm, so singular an affection subsisted between a hen and a cat attached to the barn-yard, that the cat was frequently seen sitting upon the nest during the absence of her friend; and the eggs thus hatched produced a hybrid race of fowl and cat—a fact certified by an eminent Norman naturalist, Dr. Vimond, at the close of the last century. Towards the beginning of the present, there was exhibited in the Rue St. Honoré, a mastiff bitch having a litter of two puppies and two cats, which she had brought into the world at a birth.
The ancients frequently speak of monstrous progeny. Besides the famous Minotaur of Crete, Pliny relates that a Roman lady, named Alcippa, produced a young elephant, and that a female slave brought forth a serpent. Julius Obsequens describes two Italian women, who, in the middle of the fifteenth century, produced on the same day, the one a cat, the other a dog. In such instances, dogs and cats seem to enjoy the preference. A Swiss woman, however, is asserted to have produced a hare; a Thuringian, a toad. Bayle speaks of a mare which produced a calf; and of a woman, who became the mother of a black cat, which was burnt by command of the Holy Inquisition in the belief that it was the offspring of the devil. These marvels have been chiefly attested by monks and physicians; but there is scarcely an instance in which any distinguished naturalist has been able to confirm the fact.
During the thirteenth century, in three different places, at Wittenberg, Misnia, and Villefranche, children were born without heads. They died upon coming into the world; but not without having exhibited symptoms of life.
Carpi, the anatomist, mentions a child born in 1729, in whose head was found nothing but clear water without a vestige of brain. On the other hand, children have come into the world with a double volume of brain. In 1684, a woman gave birth to twins, of which the first-born survived only a few hours, while the second exhibited a double head, having four eyes, two noses, two tongues, but only two ears.