Note 1122 — Chapter VII · (continued 2)

That is, into the study of animal monstrosities, which, however capricious they may appear, are now understood to be the necessary result of preceding events. Within the last thirty years several of the laws of these unnatural births, as they used to be called, have been discovered; and it has been proved that, so far from being unnatural, they are strictly natural. A fresh science has thus been created, under the name of Teratology, which is destroying the old lusus naturæ in one of its last and favourite strongholds.