zootomy inflicted upon him while nailed to a table. Such practices are seldom if ever engaged in at the present time. The hedgehog is certainly a very apathetic creature, and at a low temperature becomes torpid; when in this condition he is doubtless devoid of feeling. Torpidity in many animals seems to stand in the place of migration in others, as a necessary condition when provision of food depends on season: in this case the fact seems to argue in favour of our position--that the hedgehog is in a state of nature strictly insectivorous; were it not so, torpidity would not seem necessary, as roots of vegetables could be had with facility as well at one season as the other. The hedgehog while torpid loses weight rather rapidly, so that the power of its remaining in this state is limited perhaps to a very few months. The French academicians maintained long since that there were two species of hedgehog in their country. In reference to this, Ray, with his usual sagacity, after describing the common species, expresses a disbelief of there being another in Europe; a doubt since fully confirmed: for the dog and hog urchin, as the supposed species were called, have no more existence than the dog and hog badgers of our sportsmen have as distinct animals. Old authors notice several species under the name of hedgehog; but it appears by more accurate observation that but two of the animals mentioned by them are entitled to this name, viz. the one in question and the long-eared urchin of Siberia. Since 1832, at least three other species have been enrolled in the records of science. It is said that when hedgehogs are born, their ears as well as their eyes are closed, and the former circumstance is noticed as a unique fact; however, another instance of imperforate ears occurred to us, in the case of a black bear cubbed at the gardens of the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland: it lived but a few hours. The ear of the hedgehog, in the structure of its bony parts, presents some peculiarities strikingly different from most other quadrupeds. The hedgehog is said to feed occasionally on cantharides; a single beetle of which would occasion death or serious injury to most animals. If this be true, it is only another example of what often occurs in nature, illustrating the old proverb “what is one’s meat is another’s poison.” In addition to the use of the hedgehog as the destroyer of cockroaches, his skin was an important monopoly in the time of the Romans, being used both as a clothes-brush and an instrument for hackling hemp. His calcined eyes formed part of an ointment which the ancients tell us had such a wonderful efficacy as to enable persons using it to see in the dark. His gall was used to take off hair, his fat to put it on, &c.