[Illustration: "Where children thus are born with hairy coats Heaven's wrath unto the kingdom it denotes"] Another monster representing a hairy child. It was all covered with hair like a beast. That which made it more frightful was, that its navel was in the place where its nose should stand, and its eyes placed where the mouth should have been, and its mouth placed in the chin. It was of the male kind, and was born in France, in the year 1597, at a town called Arles in Provence, and lived a few days, frightening all that beheld it. It was looked upon as a forerunner of desolations which soon after happened to that kingdom, in which men to each other were more like brutes than human creatures. There was a monster born at Nazara in the year 1530. It had four arms and four legs. The imagination also works on the child, after conception, of which we have a pregnant instance. A worthy gentlewoman in Suffolk, who being with child and passing by a butcher who was killing his meat, a drop of blood sprung on her face, whereupon she said her child would have a blemish on its face, and at the birth it was found marked with a red spot. [Illustration] Likewise in the reign of Henry III, there was a woman delivered of a child having two heads and four arms, and the bodies were joined at the back; the heads were so placed that they looked contrary ways; each had two distinct arms and hands. They would both laugh, both speak, and both cry, and be hungry together; sometimes the one would speak and the other keep silence, and sometimes both speak together. They lived several years, but one outlived the other three years, carrying the dead one (for there was no parting them) till the survivor fainted with the burden, and more with the stench of the dead carcase. [Illustration] It is certain that monstrous births often happen by means of undue copulation; for some there are, who, having been long absent from one another, and having an eager desire for enjoyment, consider not as they ought, to do as their circumstances demand. And if it happen that they come together when the woman's menses are flowing, and notwithstanding, proceed to the act of copulation, which is both unclean and unnatural, the issue of such copulation does often prove monstrous, as a just punishment for doing what nature forbids. And, therefore, though men should be ever so eager for it, yet women, knowing their own condition, should at such times positively refuse their company. And though such copulations do not always produce monstrous birth, yet the children, thus begotten, are generally heavy, dull, and sluggish, besides defective in their understandings, lacking the vivacity and loveliness with which children begotten in proper season are endowed. [Illustration] [Illustration]