Abundant illustrations of the most un-natural history may be found in the works of Aldrovandus; his voluminous works on animals are very curious and interesting, and are richly illustrated with engravings at least as quaint in character as the text. His “Monstrorum Historia,” published in folio at Bologna in 1642, is a perfect treasure-house of rank impossibilities. Another book of very similar character is Boiastuau’s “Histoires Prodigeuses,” published in Paris in the year 1561, a strange assemblage of curious and monstrous figures. The wondrous creatures of Aldrovandus, and it must be borne in mind that these are given in the most perfect good faith as contributions towards a better knowledge of natural history, are divisible into three classes:—creatures that are absolute impossibilities, such as fig. 3, a man having the head and neck of a crane; secondly, various species of malformation and abnormal growth, which do undoubtedly occur from time to time; and thirdly, other forms suggested by this second class, but carried to altogether impossible excess. It is of course easy, having realized that a lizard with a forked tail is somewhat of a curiosity, to make a much greater wonder by representing, as he does, a ten-tailed lizard; and while a boy born without arms is a painful possibility, the wonder is undoubtedly greatly increased by also cutting off his legs, as Aldrovandus does, and replacing them with the tail of a fish. The creature he calls hippopos, having the head, arms, and body of a man, but terminating below in the legs and hoofs of a horse, was (though here only two-legged,) probably suggested by the centaur myth. Amongst the other impossibilities which we must nevertheless again remind our readers the old writer brings forward in the most perfect sincerity as valuable aids to a better knowledge of the wonders of creation, is a man of normal growth, except that he has the head of a wolf, the lady, fig. 4, who is distinctly of harpy type, a ram-headed individual, and a boy with the head of an elephant. [Illustration: FIG. 4.]