HEARKENING BACK TO THE HAZELWORM

Beautiful 19^th-Century chromolithograph of the remarkable phenomenon nowadays believed by zoologists to be the true explanation for bygone reports of the hazelworm (public domain)

One of the most extraordinary creatures to straddle the boundaries of mythology and reality must surely be the European hazelworm, and yet its fascinating history is all but forgotten today. High time, therefore, to resurrect it from centuries of zoological neglect and present its very curious credentials to a modern-day audience at last.

Back in the Middle Ages, the Germanic folklore of Central Europe's alpine regions contained many tales of a terrifying dragon of the huge, limbless, serpent-like variety known as the worm. But this particular worm was set apart from others by its sometimes hairy rather than scaly outer surface, and above all else by its proclivity for inhabiting areas containing a plenitude of hazel bushes. Consequently, it duly became known as the hazelworm (aka Heerwurm and Haselwurm in German, but not to be confused with a known species of legless lizard, the slow worm Anguis fragilis, which is also sometimes referred to as the hazelworm).

The slow worm, a familiar species of European legless lizard sometimes referred to as the hazelworm (© Wildfeuer/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

Additionally, Leander Petzoldt reported in his Kleines Lexikon der Dämonen und Elementargeister (2003) that according to some traditional beliefs, the hazelworm was nothing less than the Serpent that had tempted Adam and Eve with fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden, and was therefore also accorded such alternative names as the Paradise Snake and the Worm of Knowledge.

After God had cursed it and banished it for its treachery, however, the Serpent supposedly sought sanctuary in hazel bushes outside Eden, where it feeds to this day upon their foliage, and winds its elongated body around their roots. Moreover, it subsequently became passive in nature, and can readily be recognised by its whitish colouration, thus yielding for it yet another name – the white worm or Weisser Wurm. And because it is said to surface just before the onset of a war, a further name given to this contentious creature is war worm.

Painting by William Blake depicting Eve with an inordinately lengthy Eden Serpent, reminiscent of medieval reports of the hazelworm (public domain)

Early retellings of its legends ascribed to the hazelworm an immense body length. Perhaps the most famous example is a local account penned by Rector and Pastor Heinrich Eckstorm (1557-1622) that appeared in Chronicon Walkenredense. Printed in 1617, this was the Latin chronicle of his monastery, Walkenried Abbey, situated in what is today Lower Saxony, Germany. Here is what he wrote.

One day in July 1597, a woman hailing from Holbach ventured into Lower Saxony's Harz mountain range to collect blueberries, but as she ascended she encountered an enormous hazelworm, which scared her so much that she promptly abandoned her basket of diligently-picked berries and fled to the village of Zorge. There she met a woodcutter named Old William, and pleaded with him to give her shelter, which he did, although he and his wife laughed heartily and disbelievingly when the woman told them about the hazelworm.

From the Chronicon Walkenredense (public domain)

Eight days later, however, when inadvertently finding himself in the vicinity of where she had claimed to have seen the monster, Old William himself encountered it, lying across the road up ahead, and so big that he had initially mistaken it for a fallen oak tree – until it began to move, and raise its hitherto-concealed head from out of some nearby hazel bushes. He too duly fled to Zorge, where he told everyone what he had seen.

Old William estimated that the hazelworm had been around 18 ft long, was as thick as a man's thigh, was green and yellow in colour, and, of particular interest, possessed feet on its underparts, rather than being limbless. Several notable personages were present to hear his testimony, including lawyers Mitzschefal from Stöckei and Joachim Götz from Olenhusen, and doctors Johannes Stromer and Philipp Ratzenberg.

Medieval illustration of a hazelworm depicted atypically with wings (public domain)

Two centuries later, in 1790, Blankenburg-based chronicler Johann Christophe Stübner, a major sceptic of hazelworm reports, nonetheless recorded that the skeleton of a charred hazelworm was supposedly discovered in Wurmberg, a Lower Saxony forestry village near Braunlage. He also noted that in 1782 a lengthy hazelworm could apparently still be found in Allröder Forest.

Conversely, as noted by renowned South Tyrolean folklorist Hans Fink in his book Verzaubertes Land: Volkskult und Ahnenbrauch in Südtirol [Enchanted Land: Folk Art and Alpine Life in South Tyrol] (1969), stories concerning the hazelworm that still abound today in the autonomous South Tyrol (occupying a region formerly part of Austria-Hungary but annexed by Italy in 1919) aver that it is no bigger than a cradle-fitting child in swaddling clothes. (This in turn has led to some confusion with another herpetological alpine cryptid, the tatzelworm – click here to read my ShukerNature article concerning this creature.) There are even claims that it has the head of a child too and can howl like a baby crying.

Model of tatzelworm created by Markus Bühler (© Markus Bühler)

Also, it was once greatly sought after. As documented by Claudia Liath in Der Grüne Hain [The Green Grove] (2012), this was because anyone eating the flesh of a hazelworm would supposedly become immortal, remaining forever young, handsome, and healthy, and would also gain all manner of other ostensibly desirable but otherwise unobtainable benefits, such as the ability to talk to and understand the speech of animals, to discover hidden treasures, and to be fully versed in the healing properties of plants. Indeed, some of his envious, less gifted contemporaries actually avowed that the extraordinary scholarly abilities of Swiss physician, alchemist, and astrologer Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493/4-1541) must surely be due to his having secretly consumed the meat of a hazelworm.

In Hexenwahn: Schicksale und Hintergründe. Die Tiroler Hexenprozesse [The Witch Delusion: Fates and Backgrounds. The Tyrolean Witch Trials] (2018), Hansjörg Rabanser recorded that during one such trial – that of the alleged sorcerer Mathaus Niderjocher, held at the Sonnenburg district court in 1650/51 - the defendant claimed that he and a locksmith named Andreas had once hunted a hazelworm by magical means. After consulting a book of sorcery, they had drawn a magical circle around a hazel bush, then dug out the bush itself, and found at knee-deep level in the earth a stony plate, beneath which was a hazelworm that was very long, thick, and white in colour. Despite recourse to evocation spells from the book of sorcery, however, they were unable to control or capture the hazelworm, which bit Andreas in the hand before disappearing.

Portrait of Theophrastus Paracelsus, painted by Quentin Massys (public domain)

If such claims as those presented above were factual, there may even be opportunities to repeat them in the present day, judging at least from some tantalising reports of hazelworms having been killed in modern times, as collected and presented in an extensive German-language article on this subject by Swiss chronicler Markus Kappeler (click here to read it).

For example, not far from Ilfeld monastery in Honstein county at the foot of the Harz Mountains are the ruins of a castle named Harzburg, where a hazelworm was reputedly seen for three consecutive years around half a century ago, until killed by two woodcutters there, after which its body was hung from a tree, attracting many interested viewers coming from near and far. It was said to be 12 ft long, with a head reminiscent of a pike's in general form. (Back in 1712, within his major opus Hercynia Curiosa oder Curiöser Hartz-Wald, Dr Georg H. Behrens had claimed that very large, hideous-looking hazelworms inhabited these very same castle ruins.) The skin of another slain hazelworm was allegedly exhibited at one time in Schleusingen, a city in Thuringia, Germany.

A hazel bush of the common hazel Corylus avellana, around whose roots the hazelworm is traditionally believed in alpine folklore to entwine its very lengthy, elongate body (© H. Zell/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

Even today, locals inhabiting what was formerly the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg in northwestern Germany (now the Kingdom of Hanover and Duchy of Brunswick) claim that this rangy reptile is still quite common, that it sucks the milk from the udders of cows and poisons the meadows, and that they therefore still go out at certain times of the year to hunt young specimens measuring 3-4.5 ft. Make of that what you will!

For in reality, the mysterious hazelworm has long since ceased to be a mystery, at least for zoologists. Indeed, as far back as the 1770s, physician August C. Kühn documented that sightings of supposed hazelworms were actually based upon observations of long moving columns of army worms – a popular name given to the black-headed, white-bodied larva of Sciara (=Lycoria) militaris and several other dark-winged species of fungus gnat. Subsequent studies by other naturalists swiftly confirmed his statement. The exquisite 19^th-Century chromolithograph heading this ShukerNature article and presented again below depicts one such procession (and click here to view a short video of one on YouTube).

An extremely lengthy procession of fungus gnat larvae, nowadays deemed to be the identity of the very long, white-bodied hazelworm of traditional alpine lore (public domain)

Columns or processions of these insect larvae moving in a nose-to-tail manner, i.e. each larva following immediately behind another, can measure up to 30 ft long and several inches in diameter (as such columns can each be many larvae abreast). Accordingly, such a procession might well be mistaken for a single enormously lengthy, elongate snake-like entity if seen only briefly or during poor viewing conditions (e.g. at twilight, during mist or fog), and especially if unexpectedly encountered by a layman too terrified to stay around for a closer look!

Similarly, sightings of noticeably hairy hazelworms were ultimately discounted as columns of hairy caterpillars walking in single file and belonging to the pine processionary moth Thaumetopoea pityocampa. The hazelworm was no more, merely a closely-knit procession of insect larvae, not a single, uniform entity in its own right after all.

A single-file procession of processionary moth caterpillars, whose hairy bodies should never be touched as the hairs cause extreme irritation (public domain)

Of course, the above identification does beg the question: if this is truly all that the hazelworm ever was, how can we explain the reports of exhibited hazelworm skins, a charred hazelworm skeleton, and other physical evidence purportedly originating from this officially non-existent creature?

Nothing more than tall tales and baseless folklore – or a bona fide cryptozoological conundrum still awaiting a satisfactory solution?

From Iconographia Zoologica, the larva, adult, and pupa of Sciara militaris – the minute origin of a monstrous mystery…? (public domain)

GOODBYE, IVAN - MY TRIBUTE TO IVAN MACKERLE, 1942-2013

It was with great sorrow that I learnt earlier this week that Ivan Mackerle, the Czech Republic's pre-eminent cryptozoological and Fortean researcher-explorer as well as a longstanding friend and correspondent of mine, died on 3 January after a long illness. He was 71.

Ivan alongside an information board concerning Austria's Tappenkarsee lindworm

During more than four decades of investigations worldwide, Ivan sought a wide range of cryptids, including the Alpine tatzelworm and Tappenkarsee lindworm, the New Guinea ropen, the Loch Ness monster, the thylacine on mainland Australia, the Brazilian troa, the Sri Lankan nittaewo, and even Madagascar's giant elephant bird and man-eating tree. And although, sadly, he never succeeded in encountering any of his ultra-elusive quarries, he gathered considerable quantities of very valuable anecdotal and hitherto-unpublicised background information for each one.

Ivan seeking Madagascar's infamous man-eating tree

Ivan also examined many non-cryptozoological anomalies, such as the fate of the lost explorer Lieut.-Col. Percy Fawcett, Dracula's castle, the singing fishes of Batticaola, the mysterious 'cauldrons' in Siberia's Valley of Death, the ruins of Nan Madol in Micronesia, and the Czech Republic's very own historical enigma - the golem of Prague. And he meticulously documented all of his researches and findings in his many books, articles, and the films of his expeditions that he always produced.

Tajemství Pražského Golema - Ivan's book on the golem of Prague

However, he will be remembered above all else for his diligent, ground-breaking trio of expeditions to the Gobi Desert in search of the terrifying Mongolian death worm or allghoi khorkhoi. Today, it is unquestionably one of the world's most famous cryptids, yet it was virtually unknown to the West before Ivan first brought it to widespread popular attention via a World Explorer article in 1994.

Dr Jarda Prokopec and Ivan (on right) seeking the death worm in the Gobi Desert

In addition, Ivan actively encouraged my own interest in this remarkable cryptid, very kindly providing me with numerous documents and translations from Mongolian publications never before chronicled in English-language works, and always permitting me to incorporate in my own writings any of his expedition photographs and other illustrations prepared by him that I wished to use. Thank you, Ivan - I am and shall always be sincerely grateful to you for your generosity.

Mongolské Záhady - Ivan's book documenting the death worm and other Mongolian mysteries

The world is a sadder, less exciting place when pioneering, trail-blazing figures like Ivan depart from it. However, his legacy will live on not only in his publications and films but also in those many future generations of anomaly seekers inspired by him - not least of whom is his own son, Danny, now almost 50 years old, who accompanied him on several of his later expeditions.

Příšery Odnikud ('Monsters From Nowhere') - one of Ivan's books devoted to cryptozoological mysteries

Goodbye Ivan, I am so sorry that you are no longer here, but I pray that you now have the answers to all of those fascinating mysteries that you pursued for so long and for which we who remain here still strive. RIP my friend.

NB - All photographs included in this ShukerNature tribute article are © Ivan Mackerle

'A' IS FOR AJOLOTE - OF TATZELWORMS AND DEATH WORMS

Freaks of Nature, featuring an ajolote on its front cover (Dr Karl Shuker)

As a child in the late 1960s, I owned several of the animal editions in a series of tiny but fascinating books, each barely 3 inches long and containing just 32 pages, which were published by Bancroft and were aptly entitled 'Bancroft Tiddlers'. Sadly, most of mine are now long gone, having either fallen apart from over-enthusiastic use or been cut up for their pictures to paste in my numerous animal scrapbooks that I used to prepare with great zeal back in those far-distant days.

One 'Bancroft Tiddler' dealt with beetles (and I still own this today), others dealt with prehistoric animals, rare animals, tropical birds, etc. However, the one that I still recall most readily, #13 in the series, was entitled Freaks of Nature, and the reason why it made such an impression upon me was its front cover picture - which featured one of the most extraordinary creatures that I had ever seen.

As shown in this present ShukerNature blog post's opening illustration, the creature in question resembled a long, pink, segmented, coiled-up earthworm, except for its small but well-differentiated head (possessing a mouth and a pair of tiny dark eyes) – and, most dramatic of all, for the even smaller, single pair of clawed limbs visible just a little way back from its head, which looked rather like a pair of ears!

The ajolote spread from Freaks of Nature

This vermiform 'freak of nature' (which one might be forgiven nowadays for dismissing as an imaginative Photoshopped creation!) also appeared inside the book. There, it was revealed to be something called an ajolote, with the generic name Bipes (translating as 'two-footed'), which was a worm-lizard from Mexico. As can be seen from the above image, little else was said about it inside my 'Bancroft Tiddler', but it was enough to fire my interest and imagination, and stimulate me to seek out additional information concerning this astonishing little animal.

I discovered that the ajolote (of which there are four, very similar species, the best known being Bipes biporus, all approximately 6-9 inches long, confined exclusively to Mexico, and also known as mole lizards), was a very special type of amphisbaenian or worm-lizard. These latter reptiles are related to but taxonomically separate from both true lizards and snakes.

19th-Century sepia engraving of a limbless amphisbaenian

They are known as worm-lizards because superficially they do greatly resemble earthworms, both morphologically and behaviourally - spending much of their time in subterranean seclusion, moving via peristaltic locomotion, devouring real earthworms and other invertebrates, and often only emerging above-ground at night or when flushed out during heavy rain. Moreover, their tails are so similar in form to their heads that it is often difficult to decide which end of an amphisbaenian is which (their name is directly derived from the mythical amphisbaena - a worm-like monster with a head at each end of its body).

Amphisbaenians are native to tropical Africa, Morocco, the Middle East, southern Europe (Iberia and Anatolia), Florida, Mexico, the West Indies, and South America, and the vast majority are entirely limbless. The only exceptions are the four ajolote species, thanks to their tiny forelimbs.

19th-Century engraving of an ajolote (in the days when only a single species was recognised, and was referred to scientifically as Chirotes caniculatus)

Like other amphisbaenians, however, ajolotes are predominantly subterranean, fossorial species, feeding upon insects, worms, and very small lizards. They even breed underground, the female laying 1-4 eggs in July, which take 2 months to hatch. Sadly, however, ajolotes only live for 1-2 years.

Recently, I discovered online the eyecatching photograph below of an ajolote, and it seems evident that the drawing in Freaks of Nature was based upon it, but I have been unable to find any credit for this photograph, so any information regarding it would be greatly welcomed.

Online photograph of an ajolote (Photo owner unknown to me)

Interestingly, the ajolote has also cropped up as a possible identity in relation to two entirely separate creatures of cryptozoology – the European tatzelworm, and the Mongolian death worm.

One of the most tenaciously elusive mystery beasts has been reported for centuries from the Alps mountain range, extending through Switzerland, Austria, Italy, and Bavaria. It remains unknown to science, but is well known locally as the tatzelworm ('clawed worm'), stollenworm ('hole-dwelling worm'), or springworm ('jumping worm').

Tatzelworm model ((Markus Bühler)

Many eyewitness accounts of tatzelworms have been documented, some containing conflicting morphological details. Generally, however, this enigmatic beast can be described as follows.

Measuring 2-4 ft long, with light-coloured skin usually appearing smooth or surfaced with tiny scales, the tatzelworm is very elongate in shape, with a short and surprisingly cat-like head, a long worm-like body, and a blunt tail. Some observers claim that it has a pair of short clawed limbs at the front of its body; a few state that it also has a second, hind pair of limbs; and some allege that it has no limbs at all (although they may simply have been overlooked). It reputedly lives mainly in holes or burrows, but is sometimes encountered basking in alpine meadows on sunny days. If approached, it will usually vanish swiftly into its hole, but there are reports of decidedly belligerent tatzelworms that have leapt towards their startled eyewitnesses, usually causing them to flee rather than continue their observations!

Although the existence of such a sizeable creature still undiscovered by science in the Alps may seem unlikely to outsiders, the tatzelworm's reality to these mountains' inhabitants is such that in the 1800s it was even featured in three major alpine guides. According to one of them, Swiss naturalist Friedrich von Tschudi's Das Thierleben der Alpenwelt (1861):

"In the Bernese Oberland and the Jura the belief is widespread that there exists a sort of 'cave-worm' which is thick, 30 to 90 cm long, and has two short legs; it appears at the approach of storms after a long dry spell."

A tatzelworm drawing matching the above description had appeared 20 years earlier in a Swiss almanac, Alpenrosen.

The tatzelworm as depicted in Alpenrosen

However, perhaps the most famous tatzelworm illustration is the sketch of a 'scaly log' with a toothy grin, plus front and rear limbs, featuring in a Bavarian handbook, Neues Taschenbuch für Natur-, Forst- und Jagdfreunde auf das Jahr 1836, and based upon the description given by someone claiming to have shot one of these creatures.

The tatzelworm as depicted in the above-cited handbook

Over the years, some fascinating tatzelworm sightings have been recorded. One of the most dramatic, however, must surely have been the decidedly close encounter of the scary kind experienced one day in summer 1921 by a poacher and a herdsman while hunting on Austria's Hochfilzenalm Mountain, near Rauris. Suddenly, they became aware of a very strange animal, lying on a rock close by, watching them. Measuring 2-3 ft long, it was grey in colour, as thick as a human arm, with a feline, fist-sized head, and a thick tail. Alarmed, the poacher raised his rifle and shot at this bizarre beast - but as he did so, the creature, living up to its alternative name of 'springworm', abruptly jumped up through the air towards them, revealing two small front limbs but no rear limbs. Unsurprisingly, the men raced away.

A pallid smooth-skinned specimen measuring approximately 18 in long with two stub-like front limbs and noticeably large eyes was encountered in April 1929 by a teacher seeking the entrance to a cave on Austria's Mount Landsberg. The creature, which may have been a juvenile specimen in view of its small size, was lying in wet mouldy leaves, but swiftly vanished into a hole close by when the teacher tried to capture it.

Tatzelworm model (Markus Bühler)

Intriguingly, together with a number of snakes, an apparent tatzelworm was discovered in 1933 concealed inside a hollow space behind a stone wall being removed by some workmen at Spittal an der Drau in Austria. According to their description, it was 3 ft long, dirty white in colour with a yellowish tinge, and cylindrical in shape, with a cat-like head, big eyes, and two short front legs. The workmen gingerly manoeuvred this peculiar animal onto a shovel and, along with its serpentine companions, tossed it into the nearby Lieser river - across which it rapidly swam, until it disappeared from sight on the far-side bank.

Another noteworthy sighting took place near St Pankraz, Austria, in 1922, when a 12-year-old girl playing in a wooded area ran to see why her sister, playing close by, had suddenly begun to cry. When she reached her, the girl was terrified to spy, no more than 4 yards away, a grey-coloured creature with transverse grooves across its body, crawling between some stones. Measuring at least 1 ft long, it resembled a giant worm, but sported a pair of paws behind its head. Too shocked to move, the two sisters gazed at it in fascinated horror for a time before summoning up enough courage to run away.

A number of identities have been suggested in relation to the tatzelworm, including an unknown species of reduced-limbed lizard (several skinks, for instance, possess only a single pair of limbs), or even a legless lizard, as typified by the familiar slow worm Anguis fragilis and the larger European glass snake or scheltopusik Pseudopus apodus.

19th-Century colour engraving of a scheltopusik

As noted in my book The Beasts That Hide From Man (2003), however, by far the closest correspondence to the tatzelworm's reported morphology is provided by the ajolotes. Yet, frustratingly, these are unknown outside Mexico. However, there are several species of limbless amphisbaenian native to southern Europe. So is it conceivable that a large, highly elusive, undescribed species of two-legged, ajolote-lookalike amphisbaenian still awaits formal scientific discovery in central Europe?

The second cryptid that has been compared with the ajolote is a little-known mystery beast that I learnt about from veteran Mongolian death worm seeker Ivan Mackerle. Here is what I wrote about it in my extensive Fortean Studies paper (vol. 4, 1997) on the death worm that was later updated and republished as a chapter in my book The Beasts That Hide From Man (2003).

The Beasts That Hide From Man, depicting a reconstruction of the Mongolian death worm by Ivan Mackerle on its front cover (Dr Karl Shuker)

It was documented by Mongolian author S. Dzhambaldorzh in his book Mongol Nuucyn Chelchee ('Braid of Mongolian Secrets') (1990), which contains a section regarding the death worm, entitled 'The most interesting rare worm in the world'.

In that section, Dzhambaldorzh includes a report concerning an obscure cryptid that may or may not be one and the same as the death worm. Derived from geographer B. Avirmed of the Mongolian Geographical Institute, this report had first appeared in 1981, within a Mongolian newspaper. It featured the eyewitness testimony of a Mongolian shepherd:

"Shepherd L. Chorloo (Khorlaw) from Chongor Gobi in the south Gobi aimak (country) stated: "Here we see an interesting creature. Its body looks like salami, half of which is taken up by the head, and on the rear it has wings. I have seen it twice. On both occasions it was lying dead at the well."

Is it possible that this 'winged salami' is actually a worm-like reptile with only a single pair of legs, which, in a desert terrain, would probably be splayed or spatulate in shape for digging, and might therefore resemble wings? Needless to say, the ajolotes once again come readily to mind. Morphologically speaking, an extra-large ajolote would certainly provide a very plausible explanation for the legged/winged mystery worm of Chongor Gobi. Or at least it would if we are willing to assume that, because amphisbaenians' heads and tails are very similar in appearance - and because he had only ever seen dead specimens of his 'salami' cryptid - the shepherd may have mistakenly thought that his mystery beast's 'wings' (i.e. its spade-shaped legs) were at its body's rear end instead of its front end.

Photograph of a captive specimen of ajolote (at El Serpentario, La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico), showing one of its tiny forelegs (Marlin Harms/Wikipedia)

Even so, as ajolotes constitute an exclusively New World quartet, as with the tatzelworm this identification is zoogeographically unsatisfactory. Of course, as again noted earlier with the tatzelworm, it is conceivable that an Old World amphisbaenian lineage could have given rise to an undiscovered ajolote counterpart by convergent evolution. Yet aside from the account of the Chongor Gobi mystery beast, there is not a scrap of death worm related evidence to suggest this. Moreover, there is not even a single known species of amphisbaenian on record from the Far East anyway. Alternatively, the Chongor Gobi cryptid could be a species of two-legged lizard - of which a number of species are already known to science.

Yet regardless of its morphological similarity or otherwise to various species already known to science, it is still unclear whether or not this legged mystery beast from the Chongor Gobi is indeed one and the same as the seemingly limbless death worm reported elsewhere in the Gobi. Bearing in mind, however, that nomads prefer to keep as great a distance as feasible between themselves and any death worm that they encounter, it is not impossible that the latter cryptid really does possess a small, inconspicuous pair of limbs - but which can only be discerned if viewed at extremely close range or in dead specimens, and whose presence is therefore not widely realised, even among the nomads.

Finally: just in case you're wondering how I've been able to include photos here of both the cover and the ajolote spread from Freaks of Nature, bearing in mind that my childhood copy no longer exists, the answer is simple – a few days ago I was delighted to discover a copy for sale on ebay, so I duly bought it, for £2.50 plus p&p. And as you can see from the photo below of its front cover, to which its original price label was still affixed before I carefully removed it, book prices have certainly risen in the years since this little 'Bancroft Tiddler', first published in 1966 and written by Nicky Tulissio, was available in the shops! 2½p for a brand-new book! Those were the days!

Front cover of Freaks of Nature with its original price label still affixed (Dr Karl Shuker)