Q. How comes the spleen to be black? A. It is occasioned by terrestrial and earthy matter of a black colour. According to physicians, the spleen is the receptacle of melancholy, and that is black. Q. Why is he lean who hath a large spleen? A. Because the spleen draws much water to itself, which would turn to fat; therefore, men that have a small spleen are fat. Q. Why does the spleen cause men to laugh, as says Isidorus: “We laugh with the spleen, we are angry with the gall, we are wise with the heart, we love with the liver, we feel with the brain, and speak with the lungs.” A. The reason is, the spleen draws much melancholy to it, being its proper seat, the which melancholy proceeds from sadness, and is there consumed; and the cause failing, the effect doth so likewise. And by the same reason the gall causes anger, for choleric men are often angry, because they have much gall. _Of Monsters._ Q. Doth nature make any monsters? A. She doth; if she did not, then would she be deprived of her end. For of things possible, she doth always propose to bring forth that which is most perfect and best; but in the end, through the evil disposition of the matter, not being able to bring forth that which she intended, she brings forth that which she can. As it happened in Albertus’s time, when, in a certain village, a cow brought forth a calf, half a man; then the countrymen suspecting a shepherd, would have burnt him with the cow; but Albertus, being skilful in astronomy, said, that this did proceed from a special constellation, and so delivered the shepherd from their hands. Q. Are there one or two? A. To find out, you must look into the heart; if there are two hearts, there are two men. _Of Infants._ Q. Why are some children like their father, some like their mother, some to both, and some to neither? A. If the seed of the father wholly overcome that of the mother, the child doth resemble the father; but if the mother’s predominate, then it is like the mother; but if it be like neither, that doth happen sometimes through the four qualities, sometimes through the influence of some heavenly constellation. Q. Why are children oftener like the father than the mother? A. It proceeds from the imagination of the mother, as appeared in a queen who had her imagination on a blackamoor; and in an Ethiopian queen, who brought forth a white child, because her imagination was upon a white colour; as is seen in Jacob’s skill in casting rods of divers colours into the water when his sheep went to ram. Q. Why do children born in the eighth month for the most part die quickly; and why are they called the children of the moon? A. Because the moon is a cold planet, which has dominion over the child, and therefore doth bind it with its coldness, which is the cause of its death.