328 Ulisse Aldrovandi

...by the loss of cavities and passages which nature intended to be wide open in certain parts. This occurs when these channels become overly wide, when they fuse together, when they are constricted or compressed by a neighboring part, and finally when they collapse, contract, or are blocked by thick and viscous humors. Third and lastly, form is corrupted by the smoothness or roughness of parts that, by their nature, ought to be either smooth or rough, but instead acquire the opposite quality; here we should include those monsters that possess unnatural roughness or smoothness of the skin. Similarly, the size of parts can contract a defect of growth or reduction either before or after birth.

Likewise, the number of parts may be afflicted by a defect of deficiency or abundance, whether natural or unnatural—for instance, when someone is born with six fingers or only four. If this occurs after birth, it might be due to a pterygium growing in the eye and obscuring vision, or when parts are mutilated or removed entirely, which can also be classified as an "artificial" monster. Finally, the placement of parts can suffer a defect, such as if the spleen occupies the right hypochondrium, or after birth, when descending intestines form a hernia. This was the opinion of the illustrious Massaria, which, in our view, is quite close to the truth.

Others have divided monsters by their subject—into human, beast, and plant. Some have derived this division from a material principle, based on the various constitutions and deformities of the body's members that are corrupted when monsters are generated. Still others consider the fetus in an animal degenerating as a whole—as we read in Josephus the Hebrew concerning a cow giving birth to a lamb—or degenerating only in certain parts. This happens because the parts are useless due to a lack of movement, or because they are deficient in size (being too large or too small), or due to their placement or shape, as was just described according to the mind of Galen.

Finally, some distinguish monsters by time, as some are created in the womb and others outside of it. For this, Cardano provides the example of an infant abandoned in the woods who acquired not only wild habits but also a feral face, claws, and a tail from drinking the milk of beasts; this monster was captured in Meissen. We also have the example in Holy Scripture of King Nebuchadnezzar, who lived in the forests for seven years; with his hair and nails growing long and his eating of hay, he entirely resembled a wild beast, though this must be believed to have happened beyond the power of nature.

Fortunio Liceti, a man endowed with a vast store of learning who currently holds a distinguished chair of philosophy at the University of Bologna, attempts a more scientific division in his history of monsters. Based on the essential form of monsters—that is, the corrupted composition of body parts—he divides them into "uniform" and "multiform." He calls a monster uniform if it has parts representing the members of a single living species, and multiform if it is composed of parts mimicking the members of different living species.

He further divides uniform monsters into the "mutilated" (such as a fetus without hands), the "excessive" (such as a two-headed infant), and the "ambiguous" (such as a fetus with two heads but no feet). To these he adds "deformed" monsters, such as a birth with transposed members; "inform" monsters, like a round, shapeless child; and finally "enormous" monsters, a category represented by a semi-stony fetus.

All the aforementioned distinctions and differences are learned and scholarly. However, since it is our present interest to encompass and explain many more types of monsters, we shall expand these divisions. We will distribute monsters into four supreme genera based on the subject: humans, beasts, plants, and inanimate objects.

Regarding inanimate things, a monster is considered in two ways: either as it is generated in the air—thus including extraordinary meteors, which will be discussed in the final chapter of this work—or as it is produced on the earth. The latter is twofold: natural and artificial. A natural monster is some likeness delineated or carved by nature in stone.

For instance, the Jesuit Eusebius relates that on the Isle of Man, a stone is found shaped like a human thigh, which possesses an innate power such that, no matter how far it is carried away, it returns of its own accord the following night. According to the same author, on the northern inner side of the Manger of the Lord, a stone can be seen representing a venerable old man with a long beard; nature, in a playful mood, expressed this image with dark lines with such skill that it seems to everyone to have been industriously