, or how some old majority vote went
in a pack of intriguing ecclesiastics,--I say it is very curious to see
how science is catching up with one superstition after another.

There is a recognized branch of science familiar to all those who know
anything of the studies relating to life, under the name of Teratology.
It deals with all sorts of monstrosities which are to be met with in
living beings, and more especially in animals. It is found that what
used to be called lusus naturae, or freaks of nature, are just as much
subject to laws as the naturally developed forms of living creatures.

The rustic looks at the Siamese twins, and thinks he is contemplating
an unheard-of anomaly; but there are plenty of cases like theirs in the
books of scholars, and though they are not quite so common as double
cherries, the mechanism of their formation is not a whit more mysterious
than that of the twinned fruits. Such cases do not disturb the average
arrangement; we have Changs and Engs at one pole, and Cains and Abels at
the other. One child is born with six fingers on each hand, and another
falls short by one or more fingers of his due allowance; but the glover
puts his faith in the great law of averages, and makes his gloves with
five fingers apiece, trusting nature for their counterparts.

Thinking people are not going to be scared out of explaining or at least
trying to explain things by the shrieks of persons whose beliefs are
disturbed thereby. Comets were portents to Increase Mather, President of
Harvard College; "preachers of Divine wrath, heralds and messengers
of evil tidings to the world." It is not so very long since Professor
Winthrop was teaching at the same institution. I can remember two of his
boys very well, old boys, it is true, they were, and one of them wore a
three-cornered cocked hat; but the father of these boys, whom, as I say,
I can remember, had to defend himself against the minister of the Old
South Church for the impiety of trying to account for earthquakes on
natural principles. And his ancestor, Governor Winthrop, would probably
have shaken his head over his descendant's dangerous audacity, if one
may judge by the solemn way in which he mentions poor Mrs. Hutchinson's
unpleasant experience, which so grievously disappointed her maternal
expectations. But people used always to be terribly frightened by those
irregular vital products which we now call "interesting specimens" and
carefully preserve in ja