like a woman's ; others who have neither head nor mouth, but only a hole in the breast. Then there are some who are said to subsist only by the breath of their nostrils ; others a cubit in height who war with cranes. Of some 'tis told that they live not beyond eight years, but conceive and bear five times. Some have no joints; others lie ever on their backs holding up the sole of the only foot they have to shade them ; others again have dog's heads. And then poets have invented ypotamuses and plenty of other monsters.
Concerning all these St. Augustine concludeth either that they exist not at all, or if they do exist they have the use of reason, or are capable of it. All men come from Adam, and even if they be natural monstrosities still they are from Adam. Such monstrosities are indeed born among ourselves from time to time, and a few also in those regions ; but then they amount to a good many if you take what are born from the whole family of man) Such is the case (as he exemplifies the matter) with the different sorts of hunchbacks, with men who have six fingers, and many others of like character.2 So the most noble Emperor Charles IV brought from Tuscany a girl whose face, as well as her whole body, was covered with hair, so that she looked like the daughter of a fox !3
1 St. Augustine's chapter is headed : " An ex propagine Adam vel filiorum Noe qucedam genera horninum monstrosa prodierint 2" After mentioning a number of the alleged monsters, such as are detailed here, and some of which he says were painted in mosaic in the 11 aritima Platea at Carthage, he comes to the conclusion cited by Marignolli. (De Civitate Dei, xvi, 8.)
2 According to Ricci in Trigautius (De Christiana Expect. aped Sinas, 1617, p. 94) many in the southern provinces of China " had two nails upon the little toe of either foot, a thing noticed in all the people of Cochin-China, their neighbours, and perhaps an indication that they had all formerly six toes." These six-toed men occur also in India occasionally. I had a servant with this wealth of toes, and his name (Changa) was a sort of punning allusion to the peculiarity.
3 This is mentioned by Matteo Villani, who says that when the emperor was at Pietra Santa, on his return from his coronation at Rome, there was presented to him a female child of seven, all woolly like a sheep, as if with a wool badly dyed of a red colour, and covered with this to the extremities of the lips and eyelids. The empress, marvelling at such a
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