...with a flat head. Among the flat-headed Cyprian doves, it once happened that we saw a monstrous one, whose color was a whitish amethyst. The bird was, in a sense, double-bodied; specifically, it sprouted one pair of feet from a single belly, while two other feet served a second, otherwise complete body. Mixed with the amethyst color of the head was a crimson hue. Its feet were a pale red, and its claws were blackish. This is observed in Figure XVII, where it is depicted together with a vetch plant.

Within the rest of the bird kingdom, since they are all oviparous, there is no doubt that monstrous births occasionally occur. For Aelian records (as cited by Della Porta in his *Natural Magic*) that a four-headed bird was seen during the reign of a certain king. The same Aelian, quoting Apion, relates that while Ocneus reigned in the south, a two-headed crane appeared, and a three-footed hawk was once observed. For the present, we offer for inspection a monstrous bird of the goldfinch genus. We believe this kind of bird is well known to everyone; indeed, unless we are mistaken, there is no region that does not produce these little birds, and so they are kept in cages among all nations. Therefore, we will not dwell long on the description of this most familiar bird, which is always before our eyes, but instead present for the readers' consideration an illustration of a four-footed goldfinch that came into our hands, shown in Figure XVIII along with a woolly thistle. Recently in Bologna, it also happened that a noblewoman, led by curiosity, used a needle to widen a hole in a peacock egg taken from incubation; but upon seeing a four-footed, two-headed chick, she was terrified by the monstrous peacock and threw away both the egg and the chick.

Investigating the causes of the absence or doubling of feet in the offspring of animals seems somewhat redundant at this point, since they can be looked up in the section on the causes of abundance and deficiency of parts. Nevertheless, for the reader's sake—so they do not always have to refer back there—we will touch upon just a few specific details. First, regarding deficiency: one must remember monstrous parents, who, being mutilated in some part, sometimes (though not always) produce monstrous offspring.

For the most part, however, authors attribute the causes of mutilated parts not only to a defect of matter but also to a weakness in the formative faculty. Indeed, when the portion of the seed destined for the creation of the missing limbs lacks the proper temperament required by nature for those parts to grow, monstrous fetuses are formed. Furthermore, when the power of that seed dedicated to forming a specific part is dissolved by excessive uterine heat, it is deprived of its fertility; consequently, monstrous parts emerge from that portion of the seed, even while other portions of the seed retain their strength. Moreover, according to Aristotle, immoderate heat in the seed itself must be counted among these causes.

Finally, one must not overlook diseases which sometimes afflict the fetus in the womb, causing it to lose a part already formed, thereby rendering it mutilated. Indeed, one must also keep in mind the confinement of space, which can sometimes result in the parts of the fetus becoming stunted or mutilated.

Furthermore, authors generally trace the causes of the multiplication of parts back to an abundance of seminal matter. Meanwhile, monstrous parents should not be ignored: this was clearly seen in that eight-footed mare which, having recently conceived in Rome, gave birth to an equally eight-footed foal, as was shown in the illustrations above—though, according to Aristotle’s view, this is not always necessarily the case. Nevertheless, an abundance of matter dedicated to forming the legs, feet, and toes, when divided into several portions, usually produces a doubling of those limbs. Sometimes, however, copious seminal matter intended for the production of twin fetuses may, due to the confinement of space, result in a multiplication of feet while the rest of the body remains single, as the reader can see in the doves proposed in the final section, which in a sense represent a double-bodied offspring.

Unless we wish to assert that twin fetuses in the mother's womb are sometimes fused into a single monster due to some violent shock, whereby the lower parts are doubled while the upper parts represent only a single body. We believe this often happens in human fetuses, since these fetuses do not always maintain the same position in the womb.