Gorvespondener. 
Hesrnon.—Mr. Britten has given 
no substantial answer to the objection 
raised against interpreting Hebenon=— 
henbane. ‘The question depends on 
the following points :—1. Shakespere, 
“Jnowing what he was about,” wrote 
and printed hebenon, a word posses- 
sing, as has been pointed out, a 
poetical and terrible significance, if 
not representing a practical agent 
from the poisoner’s pharmacopeeia. 
The superstitious and fanciful contem- 
poraries of the poet, throughout the 
civilised world, in those palmy days of 
poisoning, attributed deadly virtue to 
many an innocuous article, and nu- 
merous fictitious poisons, of which 
acqua tofana is a notorious instance, 
were the terror of the powerful and 
illustrious. The selection of whatever 
is obscure and repulsive in nature was 
the obvious work of the poet for the 
business of murder, necromancy, en- 
chantment, &e., though the objects 
themselves, as in the case of the absurd 
pharmaca of the witches of Middleton 
and Shakespere, may for the most part 
be perfectly innocuous, or even medical 
in their nature. The supernatural, 
and that wild middle region between the 
supernatural and the physical, so often 
traversed by the poet, must not be 
tested by natural science: much less 
should the natural philosopher outrage 
the work of the poet to illustrate his 
discoveries, when the great poets 
afford plenty of legitimate examples 
of most accurate and constant ob- 
servation of the lower forms of nature. 
2. Ifthe juice of henbane or of any 
English plant, poured into the human 
ear, were known actually to produce 
general cutaneous irritation and mor- 
tification, and to end by the death of 
the patient, the above would go for 
nothing. Unless this can be shown, 
the account of the poisoning must be 
admitted to be poetical, 7.¢., fictitious : 
and in the absence of evidence we 
must assume this negative position, 
notwithstanding Mr. Britten’s pro- 
foundly scientific remark that the 
plant “produces different effects upon 
different people. eo Wises 
Hepernocs. — During a summer 
afternoon’s ramble last year, my atten- 
tion was arrested by the barking of my 
dog in the midst of a thick plantation. 
I soon found that the cause was a 
Hedgehog, of rather a large size, 
which, having rolled itself up, bid 
defiance to its antagonist. I drove 
the dog off, took up the Hedgehog, 
and placing him in my pocket handker- 
chief, brought him home, and put him 
down in the shrubbery adjoining my 
kitchen garden, where I hoped he 
would be of some advantage in destroy- 
ing slugs, beetles, worms, &c. In a 
few days I missed him: soon atter- 
wards there wasa report that a sitting 
hen had been disturbed, and her 
eggs scattered, some of which were 
hatched, and the young taken away 
for a few days nursing until the whole 
should come off. Some eggs never 
produced young, having been dis- 
turbed by (as it was supposed) a 
rat. The nest was a hundred yards 
from the garden. All that were likely 
haying been hatched, the hen and her 
eight chickens were duly cooped in 
a small courtyard near the garden. 
Next morning the maid came in with 
a doleful countenance, ‘‘ There’s been 
something and killed one of the 
chickens.’”’ The dead body was ex- 
amined; it had been mumbled and 
scratched about, but little eaten. All 
pronounced it must be a rat: so 
‘‘George”’ was sent for, and the price 
of sixpence was placed on the head of 
the marauder. The following morning 
another, and one of the best chicks, was 
dead, and was much in the same state 
as the former. The ratcatcher was 
sent for, and the price raised to a 
shilling. ‘Ill have him,” says 
“George;” ‘ [ll set more traps: ” 
these were baited with the dead chicks. 
Next morning the real thief was 
caught,—it was my pet Hedgehog! 
G. 
” 
Erratum.—No. 3, p. 70, fifth line from the bottom, for “useful ’’ read “such,” 
