424 Ulysses Aldrovandi

V. We have learned of a similar monster born in Milan in the year 1540: this was a calf possessing two perfect heads, each complete with its own tongue, teeth, nostrils, eyes, and ears. However, the heads were joined at the back of the skull, as the figure provided illustrates. One of these heads appeared rounder, like a male’s, while the other was more oblong, resembling a female’s. The fetus was removed from the mother after she was slaughtered, as her life was in imminent danger because of the prolonged labor. The monster lived for half an hour in an inn distinguished by the sign of "The Crab." Jerome Cardano recounts in detail what followed the birth of this monster, and we refer our readers to his work.

In the following year, 1541, in a town named Lagara on the island of Sardinia, a cow produced a two-headed offspring on the very night that the Roman Emperor Charles V was set to depart for North Africa. Conrad Lycosthenes adds that in December of 1551, a two-headed calf emerged from the darkness of the bovine womb in a village called Longo, not far from Freiburg.

In the subsequent year of 1552, in the town called Bonn in Lower Germany—situated on the Rhine four miles from Cologne—a calf was born in the month of May that was indeed two-headed, but it also had other parts doubled, such that it ought rather to have been called "two-bodied." However, this will be discussed later in its proper place when we treat the subject of two-bodied monsters.

VI. Finally, Marcus Frisch left a written record in his *Meteorologica* that while the Imperial Diet was being held at Augsburg by his Royal Majesty Ferdinand, King of the Romans, a calf was born on the twenty-first of May, 1555, in a village named Lader, seven miles from the city. It possessed two faces and four eyes: two in the forehead in the typical bovine manner, and others on the sides, as the illustration placed here demonstrates. The rest of its body was like that of a complete and perfectly formed calf. It did not live long; for as soon as it drew in the breath of life, it expired immediately, as if shrinking from it.

VII. We can support these older accounts of monsters with more recent cases, as we here present a life-like illustration of a double-headed calf born a few years ago in Maurenzano, near Venice. It had two mouths, four eyes, and three ears. Nature had produced one of these ears in the middle between the two heads, while the other two ears grew on the foreheads of both heads, as the reader can see by studying the illustration.

Furthermore, we offer another image of a two-headed calf for inspection, whose heads were equipped with two mouths and four eyes but only two ears, as shown in the second portrait. We have learned from trustworthy men that a similar calf was born six years ago in Rimini. To the aforementioned accounts, let us add what a Pole related to us: namely, that a seven-headed calf was born in Poland. It lived for only two hours, and he reported that it thrust out a separate tongue from each of its heads.

Indeed, the heads of cloven-hoofed animals can become marvelous and monstrous through the variety, reduction, or doubling of their horns, or by any other means. For Ludovico di Varthema published in the accounts of his voyages to the island of Ceylon—as noted by Jacques Daléchamps in his annotations on Pliny—that cows distinguished by a single horn had been sighted. Simon Maiolus, Bishop of Volturara, recounting from Olaus Magnus, says a ram was found marked with eight horns. He adds that this was all the more worthy of wonder because Albertus Magnus had marveled at a ram with four horns, even though four-horned rams are very common in Italy. But more remarkable than all others was the truly monstrous head of a roe deer, an illustration of which was once sent by the Most Serene Duke of Bavaria. On this head, seventeen horns can be counted—some branched, others not—which we have judged to be a freak of nature. On this account, we have decided to present an illustration of this head for inspection because of the beauty and variety of its horns, as appears in Figure VIII. This roe deer seems deserving of the name *polykeros* (many-horned), although because of its beautiful and elegant horns, it could also be called *kallikeros* (beautifully-horned).