Part of a Letter from Dr. Archibald Adams of Norwich, to Dr. Edwaid Tyson, Fellow of the College of Physicians and Royal Society; Concerning a Monstrous Calf, and Some Things Observable in the Anatomy of a Human Ear

IV. Part of a Letter from Dr. Archibald Adams of Norwich, to Dr. Edward Tyton, Fellow of the College of Physicians and Royal Society; concerning a Monstrous Calf, and some things observable in the Anatomy of a Human Ear. I have made what search I could about that Monstrous Calf, and I find that its Dam was all that a Poor Man had, who finding his Cow unable to cast her Young, employ'd his Neighbour to assist her; this Man not thinking of any such Rarity us'd such violence upon the Monster, that he disfigur'd the Head in pulling it from the Cow; notwithstanding it liv'd three Hours, and in all probability had lived till this time, if the Assistant had made use of the best Method in that case, and so by destroying the Owners All, might have sav'd him an Estate: then it Dy'd, and being Rip'd up was found, to the best of my Information, to be in all respects like any other of the same kind, excepting the Wings, which to me seem to be Bags formed out of the Membranes, torn and distended from the adjacent parts, and by fresh supplies from the circulating Fluids were inlarg'd to the bigness you now see them in. Whether the Substance contain'd in these Baggs was Fibrous and Muscular, or only a heap of Vessels inclofed in a Cyftis, like the Placenta, The Assistants Ignorance, and the distance of time and place, it being three Years ago, make me uncapable to account for: The place is called Wolterton in Norfolk. [The Skin of this Calf is now in the Repository of the Royal Society in Gresham-College, given to the same by Dr. Adams.] Give me leave to write one thing which to me is altogether new. The boney Cavity of the Ear is covered at each end by a Membrane; the former is called the Membrane of the Drum, and the other is directly opposite to it; the outer is stronger than the inner, so I call them with submission. They are joined together by the handle of the Malleus adhering to the outer, and the upper part of the Stirrup to the inner, which by the intervention of the Incus and the Orbicular Bone make a Chain, and they seem to be acted and re-acted by these small Bones reciprocally. Whether Artists had any respect to this Original, when they first devised Drums, I cannot say; but nothing can more nearly represent the Natural than the Artificial does; the Skins of this answering to the Membranes of that, the Wooden Cylinder to the Boney Cavity; the sound of the Drum would be flat without a Hole in the side, and Nature has given a passage from the Palate to the Ear. The Skins of the Drum would lessen the sound, if they were not kept on the stretch; so would those of the other flag, if the handle of the Hammer and the Stirrup keep them on not the Tense. This inner Membrane is closely stretch'd before the Labyrinth, the Foramen rotundum, and the passage into the Cochlea, (I omit the Foramen Ovale, because the Foot of the Stirrup exactly shuts it), that so the sound may be the bigger upon its approach to the Nerves. The Stirrup is generally broke in dissecting the Ear, particularly that Cover which goes over the Bone on each side; but if it be carefully open'd, the Stirrup is entirely cover'd with a Membrane, which forms a Cavity flatly Oval, and the inside is Excavated. Norwich, December, 18, 1706. V. An