CHIMÆRA INCENDIARIUS

KINGDOM Animalia

PHYLUM Vertebrata

CLASS Echidnæ

ORDER Praesidium

FAMILY Incendium

GENUS Chimæra

SPECIES Chimæra incendiarius

WHAT CHALLENGE LIES before whoever ponders this beast! Why would nature require it to be shaped in such a fashion? Its form is confounding and distasteful. Nonetheless, all mysteries ought to be solved; their secrets should be revealed.

Without having the great privilege and scientific benefit of studying the creature whilst it was alive and moving before me, I am unable to understand how it managed the apparent dilemma of three brains, three wills, and only one body to command. This is a great point of intrigue to me, and a burden on my ever-increasingly curious studies.

I find it baffling that the tail of the creature has the

structure of that belonging to a serpent, and yet the chimæra has none of a serpent’s functionality; it could neither slither nor coil upon the ground. I suspect that the tail is merely a system used for balance.

The musculature of the lion’s head seems to outweigh (by measure of weight, proportion, and tension) the other two heads. I concluded that the central vertebral joint, the trithoracic vertebra, can resist enough torsion to accommodate the animal moderately but not effectively.

The diet is another curiosity. All three heads, whose origins are from creatures of differing diets, must surely share a common digestive tract and other similar requirements for basic functionality. I imagine there must have been ample opportunity to benefit from such an arrangement; the goat could graze whilst the lion rested, perhaps.

It is likely that a more modest, necessary, and adaptable animal evolved from the chimæra, though I have no evidence to that end. It is my belief that the chimæra could not have survived a respectable length of time in its environment.

LIKE THE CHIMÆRA, THE CREATURE KNOWN AS THE CERBERUS ALSO HAS THREE HEADS—ONLY IN THIS CASE, THE HEADS ALL BELONG TO THE SAME

SPECIES. BLACK EXPERIMENTED WITH DOGS ON

SEVERAL OCCASIONS. WE KNOW OF THE WORK DONE WITH DARWIN’S BEAGLE, BUT WE DO NOT

KNOW THE FULL EXTENT OF BLACK’S EXPERIMENTATION WITH POLYCEPHALOUS CREATURES.