Some cock-birds are congenitally so feminine that they
will submit patiently to other males who attempt to tread them.
50
Some animals change their form and character, not only at
certain ages and at certain seasons, but in consequence of being
castrated; and all animals possessed of testicles may be submitted
to this operation. Birds have their testicles inside, and oviparous
quadrupeds close to the loins; and of viviparous animals that walk
some have them inside, and most have them outside, but all have them
at the lower end of the belly. Birds are castrated at the rump at
the part where the two sexes unite in copulation. If you burn this
twice or thrice with hot irons, then, if the bird be full-grown, his
crest grows sallow, he ceases to crow, and foregoes sexual passion;
but if you cauterize the bird when young, none of these male
attributes propensities will come to him as he grows up. The case is
the same with men: if you mutilate them in boyhood, the
later-growing hair never comes, and the voice never changes but
remains high-pitched; if they be mutilated in early manhood, the
late growths of hair quit them except the growth on the groin, and
that diminishes but does not entirely depart.
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