THE GREAT MUSEUMS OF BRITAIN. 8 1 



spondence between Hunter and Jenner. Hunter dealt 

 with the hedgehog much in the same way as modern 

 physiologists have dealt with the guinea-pig that is to 

 say, he employed this animal as a convenient vehicle 

 for the carrying out of certain physiological experiments, 

 especially some experiments connected with the tempera- 

 ture of the body. Few of Hunter's letters to Jenner are, 

 therefore, wholly without some allusions to this victim 

 of scientific research ; but he seems to have been unlucky 

 as to keeping his hedgehogs alive after he had got them. 

 Thus, in one letter he writes, ' I put three hedgehogs 

 in the garden, and put meat in different places for them 

 to eat as they went along ; but they all died.' In another 

 letter, dated a few months later, he writes, < Have you 

 made any experiments with the hedgehogs, and can you 

 send me some this spring ? for all those you sent me died, 

 so that I am hedgehogless.' In a postscript to a later 

 letter, he suggests that Jenner should send him some 

 hedgehogs in ' a box full of holes all round, filled with hay, 

 and some fresh meat put into it;' and Jenner obviously 

 complied with his instructions, for in another letter 

 Hunter acknowledges receipt of the hedgehogs, and adds 

 that one of them was dead on arrival. A year later, he 

 is again appealing to Jenner for more hedgehogs. 'If 

 you could send me a colony of them,' he writes, ' I should 

 be glad, as I have expended all I had except two ; one an 

 eagle ate, and a ferret caught the other.' 



Among other subjects about which Hunter was con- 

 stantly writing to Jenner, are such points as the sexes 

 of eels, the spawning of salmon, the migrations of swallows, 

 the anatomy of the porpoise, the temperature of plants, 



