This notion of the substitution of heads has a great charm for Aldrovandus. He gives us, elsewhere, a bird-headed boy, and horses, goats, pigs, and lions, all with human heads; while the “monstrum triceps capite vulpis, draconis et aquilæ” is, we venture to think, a creature that neither Aldrovandus, nor anyone else, ever did see or ever will see. According to the picture it had a human body and legs, differing however from those of ordinary humanity in being clothed with large scales. One arm was like that of a man, the other was the wing of an eagle, and a horse’s tail in rear was another distinctly abnormal growth, while surmounting all were three heads, those of a wolf, a dragon, and an eagle. There are many other such atrocities; while they are curious as showing the depth of credulity our forefathers could reach, it will readily be seen that they are the dullest things possible. Anyone with a slight knowledge of zoology could create them by the score, placing, for instance, on the neck of a giraffe the head of an elephant, giving it the body of an alligator, and finishing off all neatly with the tail of a peacock. The multiplication, or suppression, or distortion of various parts is a very strong point with Aldrovandus. He illustrates for our benefit four-legged ducks and pigeons, and two-headed pigs, sheep, cows, and fishes; calves, dogs, hares, each walking erect on their hind legs and having no front ones, and pigs, cats, dogs, chickens, double-bodied but single-headed. He also tells us of headless men, and gives us a drawing of one, neckless, having the ears rising from the shoulders, mouthless, the nose a proboscis a foot or so in length; this and the eyes are on the back of the figure. Fig. 5 we may fairly include as an example of distortion, while fig. 6 is a monstrosity produced by suppression. In another place he gives a drawing of a man having two eyes in their natural position, and beyond each of these another, so that we have four in a row. [Illustration: FIG. 5.] [Illustration: FIG. 6.] One quaint picture shows us two men wearing large ruffs and habited in quite the costume of “the upper ten” of the seventeenth century, but their faces are covered with thickly matted hair, their eyes peeping out like those of a skye-terrier. This idea was too grotesque not to utilize to the uttermost, so the next picture in the book is that of a young lady in the same plight.