35 1 HISTOrvY OF 



proportion with hair ; but unlike that animal, they do not de- 

 fend themselves by rolling up in a ball. Their wanting this last^ 

 property is alone sufficient to distinguish them from an animal 

 in which it makes the most striking peculiarity : as also that in 

 the East Indies, where only they are found, the hedgehog exists 

 separately also ; a manifest proof that this animal is not a vari- 

 ety caused by the climate. 



The Tanrec is much less than the hedgehog,' being about the 

 size of a mole, and covered with prickles, like that animal, ex- 

 cept that they are shorter and smaller. The Tendrac is still less 

 than the former, and is defended only with prickles upon the 

 head, the neck, and the shoulders ; the rest being covered with a 

 coarse hair resembling a hog's bristles. These little animals, 

 whose legs are very short, move but slowly. They grunt like a 

 hog ; and wallow like it in the mire. They love to be near wa- 

 ter, and spend more of their time there than upon land. 

 They are chiefly in creeks and harbours of salt water. They 

 multiply in great numbers, make themselves holes in the ground, 

 and sleep for several months. During this torpid state, their 

 hairs (and I should also suppose their prickles) fall ; and they 

 are renewed upon their revival. They are usually very fat ; and 

 although their flesh be insipid, soft, and stringy, yet the Indi- 

 ans find it to their taste, and consider it as a very great delicacy. 



THE PORCUPINE. 



Those arms which the hedgehog possesses in miniature, the 

 Porcupine has in a more enlarged degree. The short prickles 

 of the hedgehog are, in this animal, converted into shafts. In 

 the one, the spines are about an inch long ; in the other, a foot. 

 The porcupine is about two feet long, and fifteen inches high. 

 Like the hedgehog, it appears a mass of misshappen flesh, cover- 

 >d with qnills, from ten to fourteen inches long, resembling the 

 Oarrel of a goose- quill in thickness, but tapering and sharp at 

 Doth ends. These, whether considered separately or together, 

 afford sufficient subject to detain curiosity. Each quill is thick. 

 est in the middle ; and inserted into the animal's skin, in the 

 same manner as feathers are found to grow upon birds. It is 

 within-side spongy, like the top of a goose-quill ; and of differ- 

 1 Bufibii, voL XXV. 1'. 2bi. 



