3g6 ORIGIN AND TRANSMISSION 



quills of a hedgehog, shorn off within an inch of the 

 skin." These productions were hard, callous, and insensible. 

 Other children of the same parents were naturally formed. 



In a subsequent account, presented to the society twenty- 

 four years afterwards by Mr. H. Baker, and illustrated with 

 a figure of the hands, this man is said to continue in the 

 same state. He was a good looking person, and enjoyed 

 good health ; every thing connected with his excretions was 

 natural ; and he derived no inconvenience from the state of 

 his skin, except that it would crack and bleed after very 

 hard work. He had now been shewn in London under the 

 name of " The Porcupine Man." "The covering," says 

 Mr. Baker, "seemed most nearly to resemble an innumer- 

 able company of warts, of a dark-brown colour, and a cylin- 

 drical figure, rising to a height (an inch, at their full size), 

 and growing as close as possible to one another, but so stiff 

 and elastic, that when the hand is drawn over them they 

 make a rustling noise." 



They are shed annually, in the autumn or winter, and 

 succeeded by a fresh growth, which at first are of a paler 

 brown. " He has had the small-pox, and been twice sali- 

 vated, in hopes of getting rid of this disagreeable covering ; 

 during which disorders the warts came off, and his skin ap- 

 peared white and smooth, like that of other people ; but on 

 his recovery it soon became as it was before. His health at 

 other times has been very good during his whole life. He 

 has had six children, all with the same rugged covering as 

 himself; the first appearance whereof in them, as well as in 

 him, came on in about nine weeks after the birth. Only one 

 of them is living, a very pretty boy, eight years of age, whom 

 I saw and examined with his father, and who is exactly in 

 the same condition *." 



Two brothers, John Lambert, aged twenty-two, and 

 Richard, aged fourteen, who must have been grandsons of 

 the original porcupine man, Edward Lambert, were 



* Philos. Trans, v. 49. p. 21. A reprcs-ntatioii of the hand is also given 

 by Edwards, in his Gleanings of Natural History, v. i. p. 212. 



