STRANGE FREAKS OF NATURE.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 342, 31 October 1908, Page 11

STRANGE FREAKS OF NATURE.

The recent law case in Australia to. decide the possession of a two-headed baby serve* to' recall the fact that human nature has al* ways found a certain morbid satisfaction in the spectacle of freaks. Many very tall storiea have found credence, in consequence of that' Mr. Philip Luckombo, who made a tour of Iroland ever so long ago, wrote from Cork, in■l7B3:— * "Among other things I was here shown a set of knives and forks, whose handles were ■niado of a bony substance, or excrescence. • that grew out of the heels of the wonderful ossified body of the man I saw in Trinity. , College,' Dublin; lie was a native of this place. ! These bones grew in the form of a cock's-spur, but much larger, as ■ yon may easily imagine, since the' handles are of a common size. They were not sawed off,, but fell yearly, like the horns of' a stag, without any force, or pain to th'a limbs that bore them. They were well polished, and of a very hard substance, equal to ivory,, though not so white." A man who'grew horns on his heels had at least the merit of originality among the fieaks. Of other freaks—giants and dwarfs and human ostriches and all the rest of it—there have been, and are still, a tedious multitude. But perhaps , tho strangest, freak now surviving is tho . man who will drink any other tea from choice once lie has tasted Suratura. Aa his name and address have not yet been discovered, the story of his existence vis probably a canard. Suratura tea is a delight to the palate and a support to the nerves. It is the selected leaf of the finest garden of Ceylon, f