ration.

Q. Why do women conceive twins? A. Because there are seven cells or
receptacles in the womb; wherefore they may naturally have so many
children at once as there falls seed into these cells.

Q. Why are twins but half men, and not so strong as others? A. The seed
that should have been for one, is divided into two and therefore they
are weakly and seldom live long.

_Of Hermaphrodites._

Q. How are hermaphrodites begotten? A. Nature doth always tend to that
which is best, and always intendeth to beget the male and not the
female, because the female is only for the male's mate. Therefore the
male is sometimes begotten in all its principal parts; and, yet, through
the indisposition of the womb and object, and inequality of the seeds,
when nature cannot perfect the male, she brings forth the female too.
And therefore natural philosophers say, that an hermaphrodite is
impotent in the privy parts of a man, as appears by experience.

Q. Is an hermaphrodite accounted a man or a woman? A. It is to be
considered in which member he is fittest for copulation; if he be
fittest in the woman's, then he is a woman; if in a man's, then he is a
man.

Q. Should he be baptized in the name of a man or a woman? A. In the
name of a man, because names are given _ad placitum_, and therefore he
should be baptized, according to the worthiest name, because every agent
is worthier than its patient.

_Of Monsters._

Q. Doth nature make any monsters? A. She doth; if she did not, then
would she be deprived of her end. For of things possible, she doth
always propose to bring forth that which is most perfect and best; but
in the end, through the evil disposition of the matter, not being able
to bring forth that which she intended, she brings forth that which she
can. As it happened in Albertus's time, when in a certain village, a cow
brought forth a calf, half a man; then the countrymen suspecting a
shepherd, would have burnt him with the cow; but Albertus, being skilled
in astronomy, said that this did proceed from a certain constellation,
and so delivered the shepherd from their hands.

Q. Are they one or two? A. To find out, you must look into the heart, if
there be two hearts, there be two men.

Q. Why are some children like their father, some like their mother, some
to both and some to neither? A. If the seed of the father wholly
overcome that of the mother the child doth resemble the father; but if
the mother's predomi