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On inquiring if he had ever heard of cannibals, or people with tails, he replied, "Yes, but we have always understood that these and other monstrosities are met with only among you sea-going people." The other monstrosities he referred to were those who are said to have eyes behind the head as well as in front: I have heard of them before, but then I was near Angola, in the west.
I will mention to you some two or three cases, because they are very remarkable in themselves, and also because I shall want to use them afterwards. Reaumur, a famous French naturalist, a great many years ago, in an essay which he wrote upon the art of hatching chickens, which was indeed a very curious essay, had occasion to speak of variations and monstrosities.
As George paced the floor, waiting for the news, the memory of his evil dreams came back to him. He remembered all the dreadful monstrosities of which he had read infants that were born of syphilitic parents. His heart stood still when the nurse came into the room to tell him the tidings. But it was all right; of course it was all right!
On the Muckle Friday, the fair for which children storing their pocket-money would accumulate sevenpence halfpenny in less than six months, the square was crammed with gingerbread stalls, bag-pipers, fiddlers, and monstrosities who were gifted with second-sight. There was a bearded man, who had neither legs nor arms, and was drawn through the streets in a small cart by four dogs.
The shapes evolved by the wonderful telescope of Lord Rosse are, many of them, absolutely fantastical; wonder and awe are mingled with almost ridiculous feelings in contemplating the strange apparitions strange monstrosities we had almost called them that are pictured on the background of the illustrations.
The children, and perhaps a few of the grown people, found in these clusters of knots queer similitudes of faces, strange figures and constellations, which, though conned Sunday after Sunday until known by heart, still seemed ever to show in their irregular groupings a puzzling possibility of the discovery of new configurations and monstrosities.
In this definition we must note two things: because a mole is said to be inarticulate or jointless, and without shape, it differs from monstrosities which are both formata and articulata; it is said to be, as it were a true conception, which makes a difference between a true conception, and a mole, and this difference holds good in three ways.
There were serpents two yards long, with a head and a pair of feet at each end; frogs as large as a man, with human hands and feet; turtles with three heads; monkeys with two heads and six legs; scores of equally curious monstrosities; and at least two dozen mermaids, of all sorts and sizes. Looking at these "sirens" he easily divined from whence the Feejee mermaid originated.
The eggs of certain forms may be made to produce twins by altering the constitution of the sea-water, and the twins can be made to grow together so as to produce monstrosities by another chemical change in the sea-water. The eyes of certain fish embryos may be fused into a single cyclopean eye by adding magnesium chloride to the water in which they live.
Himself a man of splendid physique, Burton wanted to see every man in England physically healthy and strong. He considered it abominable that infant monstrosities or children born blind should be allowed to live, and held that showmen and others who exhibit monstrosities should be promptly jailed.
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