“I had a mother Hedgehog,” he writes, “who was suckling her young. I threw a large Viper into her box. The Hedgehog soon felt that he was there, for she is guided by the sense of smell and not of sight. She got up, went fearlessly to the Snake and sniffed at him from head to foot, especially about the mouth. The Viper hissed and bit her several times on the snout and lips. As though to make fun of her feeble assailant, she contented herself with licking her wounds, continued her inspection and was once more bitten, but this time in the tongue. At last, she seized the Viper by the head, which she crunched between her jaws, together with the poison-fangs and glands. Then she devoured half the reptile, after which she returned to lie down beside her young and give them to suck. That evening she ate another Viper and what remained of the first. Her health was not affected thereby, nor was that of the little Hedgehogs; her wounds did not even swell. “Two days later, there was a new Viper and a new fight. The Hedgehog went up to the reptile and smelt it. Opening her jaws and erecting her poison-fangs, the Viper rushed upon her, bit her in the upper lip and remained hanging there for a time. The Hedgehog shook him off and, though bitten ten times in the muzzle and twenty times elsewhere, amidst the prickles, she seized him by the head and devoured him slowly, notwithstanding his contortions. This time again neither the mother nor the sucklings seemed unwell.” It is said that Mithridates, King of Pontus, to fortify his constitution against the dangerous potions with which his enemies attempted to destroy him, accustomed himself to different poisons. By degrees he inured his stomach against venom. Can the Hedgehog, that new Mithridates, in her quality as a Snake-eater, have acquired her immunity by gradual use and wont? Or is it not rather in her case, an original aptitude? When for the first time she bit into the reptile’s head, did she not already possess the predisposition necessary to her safety? She did, the Cetonia-larva tells us for our answer. If any members of the insect clan has to provide itself with defensive means against the Scorpion’s attacks, it is certainly not the grub that dwells amid vegetable decay. The two do not frequent the same places, which makes meetings almost impossible. On the larva’s part, therefore, there is no increasing tolerance of the poison. The first to find themselves in the Scorpion’s presence are perhaps those which I myself place there. Nevertheless, without preparations of any kind, behold the grub refractory to the sting. It possesses, from the first, powers of resistance to the poison which is quite as surprising as that of the reptile-eater.