Helwig knew an old man who was in the habit of eating eighty pounds of different articles of food daily. Real Colomb mentions an omnivorous glutton, who, in the absence of any salutary aliment, satisfied his cravings with any other substance, and was once known, when hungry, to eat the contents of a sack of charcoal, and then to swallow the bag to facilitate its digestion. One of the attendants on the menagerie of the Botanical Gardens in Paris, who bore the euphonious name of _Bijou_, used to devour all the offals of the theatre of Comparative Anatomy, and ate a dead lion in one day. He was active, and lived to the age of sixty. A cannibal once desolated the Vivarais, by dragging human victims to his den, where he devoured them. On the opening of the corpse of a convict in the galleys of Brest, there were found in his stomach about six hundred pieces of wood, pewter, and iron. All these accounts might appear most exaggerated, perhaps fabulous, had not many physicians in Paris known the celebrated Tarrare. The history of this monster is as curious as his habits were disgusting. He commenced his career in life in the capacity of clown to an itinerant quack, and used to attract the notice of the populace by his singular powers of deglutition, swallowing with the utmost ease corks, pebbles, and basketsful of apples. However, these experiments were frequently followed by severe pain and accidents, which once obliged him to seek assistance in the Hotel Dieu of Paris. His sufferings did not deter him from similar experiments; and he once tried to exhibit his wonderful faculties by swallowing the watch, chain and seals, of Mr. Giraud, then house-surgeon of the establishment. In this repast he was foiled, having been told that he would be ripped up to recover the property. In the revolutionary war, Tarrare joined the army, but was soon exhausted on the spare diet to which the troops were obliged to submit. In the hospital of Sultzen, although put upon four full rations, he was obliged to wander about the establishment to feed upon any substance he could find however revolting, to subdue his voracious hunger. These singular powers induced several physicians to ascertain how far these omnivorous inclinations could carry him in his unnatural cravings. In presence of Dr. Lorentz he devoured a live cat, commencing by tearing open its stomach, and sucking the animal's blood with delight. What was more singular, after this horrible feast, like other carnivorous brutes, he rejected the fur and skin. Snakes were to him a delicious meal, and he swallowed them alive and whole, after grinding their heads between his teeth. One of the surgeons, Mr. Courville, gave him a wooden lancet-case to swallow in which a written paper had been folded. This case was rejected undigested, and the paper being found intact, it became a question whether he might not be employed to convey secret correspondence; but having been taken up at the Prussian outposts as a spy, being