256 



tmecl to be at least three hundred. The hedgehog, liker 

 the snail, makes use of her horns for feeling the earth, 

 and the various bodies it meets with in its passage: but 

 it particularly employs them to fasten with and cast 

 anchor. The tubercles are the bases of many prickles* 

 or legs; and their number amounts to at least two thou- 

 sand one hundred : so that there is hardly any part of 

 the body of a hedgehog that is destitute of a leg. It 

 can, for that reason, u a ik as well on the back as on the 

 belly ; and in general, let it be in what posture it will, 

 it has always a great number of legs ready to carry it, 

 and horns to fix it with. The legs il uses with the 

 the greatest ease, are those which surround the mouth ; 

 but when it pleases, can walk by turning round on it- 

 self like a wheel. On the back or the top of the but- 

 ton, is another aperture which is thought to be the 

 anus. * This then is an anirnai that is provided with at 

 least thirteen hundred horns, and two thousand one 

 hundred legs. What a great number of muscles must 

 it require to move so many horns and legs 7 How 

 many fibres must there be in each of these muscles 1 

 What an astonishing multiplication of parts in this little 

 animal ? What regularity, what symmetry, and even 

 harmony, in their distribution ! What variety in their 

 exercise ! 



When the hedgehog would advance, he draws him- 

 self forwards with those legs that are nearest the place 

 lie would go to, and pushes himself towards it with the 

 opposite ones : all the rest ^remain at that time in a 

 state of inaction. At the same time that one part of 

 his legs are at work, the horns that are nearest to then* 

 exert themselves to sound the way, or iirid anchorage 

 for the animal, 



22. Most shelf-fish are produced with their clothing: 

 the shell they bear grows with them and by them. But 

 Bernard the hermit, a kind of cray-fish, so called, comes 

 into the world wiiho ;t a* shell, though he hu> need of 

 one in order to cover the rre^f.*r part of his body ; 

 whose thin and delicate skin would suffer too much from 



