400 
PORCUPINE MAN. 
friends, was hunting in the forest of Hertswold. He was supposed 
to be then about twelve years of age, and had subsisted in those 
woods upon leaves, berries, wdld plants, bark of trees, &c. from his 
infancy. How long he had been in that state is not known. In 1726 
he was brought over to England, and put under the care of Dr. Ar- 
buthnot, with proper teachers. But though there appeared no natu- 
ral defect in his organs of speech, he could never be brought to arti- 
culate a single syllable distinctly. He was afterwards committed to 
the care of different persons, but never acquired any degree of im- 
provement. He died 22d of February, 1785, when he was supposed 
to be seventy-two years old. He was w^ell-made ; middle sized ; had 
no appearance of an idiot, nor an^ thing particular in his form, ex- 
cept two of his fingers united by a web up to the middle joint. He 
was delighted with music, and learnt to hum a tune. He had a fore- 
knowledge of bad weather. Lord Monboddo gives a particular de- 
scription of him, as an instance of his favourite hypothesis, that man 
in a state of nature is a mere animal.” 
Porcupine Man. 
This is the name by which one Edward Lambert, who had a dis- 
tempered skin, went by in London. The following account of him 
is given in the Philos. Trans, for 1755, by Mr, Henry Bakers, F. R. S. 
He is now,” says he, “ forty years of age, and it is twenty -four 
years since he was first shewn to the Society. The skin of this man, 
except on his head and face, the palms of his hands, and the soles of 
his feet, is covered wdth excrescences that resemble an innumerable 
company of w'arts, of a brown colour and cylindrical figure ; all-rising 
to an equal height, which is about an inch, and growing as close as 
possible to each other at their bases ; but so stiff and elastic as to 
make a rustling noise when the hand is drawn over them. These 
excrescences are annually shed and renewed in some of the autumn 
or winter months. The new ones, which are of paler colour, gradually 
rise up from beneath, as the old ones fall off ; and at this time it has 
been found necessary for him to lose a little blood, to prevent a slight 
sickness which he had been used to suffer before this precaution was 
taken. He has had the small-pox, and has been twice salivated, in 
hopes to get rid of this disagreeable covering ; but though just when 
the pustules of the small-pox had scaled off, and immediately after 
his salivations, his skin appeared white and smooth, yet the excres- 
cences soon returned to a gradual increase, and his skin became as it 
was before. 
“ His health, during his whole life, has been remarkably good : but 
there is one particular of this case more extraordinary than all the 
rest ; this man has had six children, all of whom had the same, rug- 
ged covering as himself, which came on, like his own, about nine weeks 
after their birth» Of these children only one is now living, a pretty 
boy, who was shewn with his father. It appears, therefore, as Mr. 
Baker remarks, that a race of people might be propagated by f his 
man, as different, from other men as an African is from an English- 
man ; and that if this should have happened in any former age, and 
