Schenck likewise reports, following Paré, that a lamb with a monstrous head was born in the year 1573 in the suburbs of the city of Cesena, in a place called Campo Benedetto, at the home of the salt-measurer Giovanni Poleti. This creature died soon after birth, showing only the slightest signs of life; this monstrous head is shown in Figure 20. In the time of Dion, as Plutarch recounts, pigs were born that were perfect in all other respects but lacked ears, a phenomenon they considered a portent.

Furthermore, to provide even greater evidence for these claims, I have chosen to present the image of a dog with a monstrous head and a single eye, which we found engraved in the public museum alongside a dog-shaped plant—specifically, Dioscorides' crocus, according to Lobelius—as represented in Figure 21.

Before we proceed to write the chapter on monstrous arms and hands, we must first examine the causes of a monstrous head. Regarding infants born with teeth, it should be noted that this arises from the formative power of the parts of the human body. This power—whether it be a spirit emanating from the seed (as Aristotle held), something unknown (as Galen thought in his book *On the Formation of the Fetus*), something divine depending on Ideas or the Soul of the World (as Plotinus, the interpreter of Plato, asserted), or the Intelligence which Avicenna called the "Giver of Forms"—generates teeth in the mother’s womb or acquires the power to produce them there.

In this regard, teeth emerge in some people quite late, and in others before the expected time; thus, the period for teething is not fixed for everyone, as even molars can grow in old age. Indeed, the famous anatomist Vesalius records that a molar grew in his own mouth in his twenty-sixth year. Likewise, Alessandro Benedetti relates that teeth grew back in the mouth of an eighty-year-old woman named Victoria Fabriensis. Therefore, that formative force exerts its influence sometimes early, in the womb, and sometimes later, outside of it.

As for infants born with beards, we must remember that the cause of hair is a dry, sooty residue mixed with thick and viscous moisture. When fetuses are overflowing with this material and possess a strong expulsive faculty, they undergo the generation of hair and beards prematurely. Sometimes this cause is traced back to the father’s seed, specifically that portion relating to the head; for if the paternal seed originating from the father’s head was fully vigorous in forming the male fetus’s head, but its original strength failed during the formation of the remaining parts, it leaves the rest of the work—namely the lower parts—to be formed by the spirited portion of the mother’s seed. Thus, it is not surprising to see a woman with a masculine head and a prominent beard, while her other parts are female.

Occasionally, the cause of this effect is attributed to the parents' imagination, due to some image of a particular type being impressed upon the parents' phantasy. Once this is communicated to the spirits and the formative power, the tender fetus easily takes on the mark of that image. This should not surprise us; for if a parent’s imagination can produce the marks of fruits or animals on a human concept—even though these differ greatly from human nature—it is much more capable of creating a monstrous version of a figure within the same species.

Finally, this effect is attributed to the nature and form of parents of a similar kind. Indeed, if one of the parents possesses a monstrous appearance, they can undoubtedly procreate offspring similar to themselves, as Nature always strives to produce an effect resembling its cause. This happened recently in Parma, at the serene Farnese court, in the case of a girl with a hairy face who, after marrying and conceiving, gave birth to children whose entire faces were hairy. The same must be said of the bearded German woman. However, this does not necessarily happen every time; if the paternal seed is endowed with greater vigor and overcomes the maternal seed, the fetus born from it will undoubtedly be perfect and without monstrous deformity. Conversely, if the mother’s seed dominates, only a monstrous birth of that same species can occur.

When monsters are born without eyes, we can only attribute this effect to the weakness of the formative power which, since it alone performs the duty of forming