Professor Buckland made the experiment by placing a common snake in the same box with a hedgehog. It is narrated in the words of Mr Broderip :- Whether or not the former recognised its enemy was not apparent; it did not dart from the hedgehog, but kept creeping gently round the box; the hedgehog was rolled up, and did not appear to see the snake. The professor then laid the hedgehog on the snake, with that part of the ball where the head and tail meet downwards, and touching it. The snake proceeded to crawl-the hedgehog started, opened slightly, and seeing what was under it, gave the snake a hard bite, and instantly rolled itself up again. It soon opened a second, and again a third time, repeating the bite; and by the third bite the back of the snake was broken. This done, the hedgehog stood by the snake's side, and passed the whole body of the snake successively through its jaws, cracking it, and breaking the bones at intervals of half an inch or more; by which operation the snake was rendered motionless. The hedgehog then placed itself at the tip of the snake's tail, and began to eat upwards, as one would eat a radish, without intermission, but slowly, till half the snake was devoured. The following morning the remaining half was also completely eaten up.'

In confirmation of this, we may mention that another observer saw a hedgehog in a state of captivity take a live rabbit by the throat; and we remember some years ago hearing of a peafowl's nest with young (built, as is usual with these wandering birds, under a hedge or bush) which was found partly harried; and that, when a trap was set, a hedgehog was taken, and reasonably concluded to be the culprit. It is, on these grounds, one of the too many species of our native fauna proscribed, and in all manner of ways persecuted, by gamekeepers.

southern and part of the middle divisions, and not to occur in the northern districts, nor in the western or northern islands.' Dr M Gillivray is probably correct in this statement; yet in one district, the northern inland part of Aberdeenshire, with which we are familiar, and which we must suppose to be beyond the assigned limits, hedgehogs are abundant; and we remember that last spring our little spaniel, who often forms a trio with our rod and basket, amusing himself with occasional excursions, found two of them within a few yards of the river bank.

Among other peculiarities, the hedgehog is said, with its congeners, to have exemption from the usual effects of some animal and vegetable poisons, so as to remain unharmed by the viper's bite, and to be able to dine with impunity on cantharides (Spanish flies), with sauce of prussic acid. On the first particular, which is less improbable, we have no evidence; but, in regard to the latter, we are able to refer to several instances in which hedgehogs have been poisoned with that deadliest of juices. The error is said to have its origin in the power of this animal to close its mouth or rather oesophagus, so as to prevent the passage of the poison administered.

One of the most interesting particulars about the hedgehog is its hybernation. It requires no 'provision of meat' for winter, the first access of cold throwing it into a state of perfect torpidity, from which it does not awake until the middle of spring. How far it is emaciated by such a mode of existence, we are not prepared to say, still less to assert, with our distinguished naturalist, that its slumber is dreamless; although it is certainly undisturbed by the violence of the tempest, and only rendered still more profoundly torpid by the bitterest frost.' For this long sleep it prepares by forming for itself a nest of withered leaves, moss, &c., and, rolling itself into a ball at the bottom of a hedge, or in the hollow of a tree, or such other refuge, passes an untroubled, unchanging winter; to be wakened, perchance, on some sunny March or April day, by the song of the lark or mavis.

pence.

The hedgehog is by no means so prolific as its domestic namesake, and it would be impossible to find one who hath eaten her nine farrow; but she is said, like many other animals, to show in confinement the same disposition to destroy her offspring. The number at a birth would appear, however, to be from two to four: we can answer for four; having captured long ago a mother with so many 'pigs,' which we enclosed in a paled court, about a yard square, constructed for the purpose; from which, although liberally supplied with milk and cherries, she had before morning liberated all the party, by undermining the shallow walls. These young ones might be about the size of large French pears; and their spines were tolerably well hardened. At birth, these are soft, white, and flexible; and the young come forth blind. The nest, which we have never seen, is said to be curiously and skilfully formed, so as to be even rainproof.

The stiff pied spines, set zigzag, and covering the whole back and sides, afford this little animal most effective protection, forming an offensive defensive armour which few of its enemies can penetrate, and, when the wearer is prepared for attacks by having rolled himself into a ball, presenting more points than the compactest body of infantry, and remarkably distinguish it from all our other British quadrupeds. The skin appears to have been used by the Romans for the hackling of hemp. In this feature it is like the fretful porcupine.' Needing, indeed, none, it hardly possesses any other means of safety. It neither burrows like the rabbit, nor runs like the hare, nor, although an expert climber, frequents inaccessible holes of all sorts, like most of our small mannifer; but, more resembling a thistle-head than anything else which we can think of, he lies like a true native, with the ensign, 'noli me tangere.'

Yet in Scotland it is said to be found only in the

But he has

tunity. Here we will only note, that the habits and structure of the hedgehog seem to disqualify it for finding sufficient food during the ungenial season. Its tender snout could by no means pierce the frozen ground in order to reach plantain roots; then snakes are gone to their winter quarters, with frogs, snails, and other creeping things;' there are no eggs or young birds; and, were he left to wander about in search of food, his existence, if at all possible, must be at least unhappy. been kindly provided for: the cold brings him a blessing; and, in his sheltered bed, he lies secure in the wealth which knows no want; waiting until brighter days and a greener earth shall invite him to new activities. Here we must take leave of our familiar unapproachable friend, who bears his part in Æsop's fables, and to whom, among other debts, we owe one of our best German tales, that of the Hare and the Hedgehog.'

THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

THERE is a marked likeness between the virtue of man and the enlightenment of the globe he inhabits, the same diminishing gradation in vigour up to the limits of their domains, the same essential separation from their contraries, the same twilight at the meeting of the two: a something wider belt than the line where the world rolls into night, that strange twilight of the virtues; that dusky debateable land, wherein zeal becomes impatience, and temperance becomes severity, and justice becomes cruelty, and faith superstition, and each and all vanish into gloom.

Nevertheless, with the greater number of them, though their dimness increases gradually, we may mark the moment of their sunset; and, happily, may turn the shadow back by the way by which it had gone down; but for one, the line of the horizon is irregular and undefined; and this, too, the very equator and girdle of them all, truth;

and, with her crucifix pressed to her lips, murmured a brief prayer for the soul of the departed-there, on the wild desert shore, with ocean's voice for a dirge, and the tempest for a requiem. Then, in the utter desolation of spirit which has no outward manifestation, that great agony, fearful in its tearless stillness, she turned, and meekly followed the foot-prints in the sand, which told where her shipwrecked companions had gone before her. Oh, pale young mourner, sitting in thy darkened chamber, giving way to thy sorrow with passionate abandonment, listen! The angels have called hence thy mother, and thou hast indeed known the grief of griefs; but, if still unreconciled to Him who willed thy bereavement, bethink thee of one whose own hands laid to rest her best beloved ones, shroudless and coffinless; one who literally buried father and mother, and had no time for weeping.

The unfortunates met sympathy and kindness in the fisherman's house, which they reached at last, and the next day Mary Conway and her nephew proceeded to the nearest town, where she sought and found employment for them both, intending to seek her brother, as soon as she had earned sufficient to defray her travelling expenses. All her money and papers had been lost at the time of the wreck, and, most unfortunately, the shock of that disaster, and her succeeding afflictions, had driven from her mind all recollection of her brother's place of residence. She but remembered that it was somewhere in the state of New York, and she finally resolved to go at once to the city of New York, where she hoped to hear of the place she wished to find. At last she reached that great metropolis, still accompanied by her young nephew, for her widowed sister, when dying, had given him to her, and she was ever faithful to the holy trust. She soon proeured a situation for herself and little charge, in a boarding-house, where she remained about a month, still unable to recall the name of the village to which her brother had directed her. But one day a stranger arrived, and, on his trunk being brought into the hall, upon the card affixed to it she recognised, with a cry of delight, that lost,

that blessed word!

The next morning saw her and little Alick on the deck of one of the Hudson steamers, waving adieu to the few friends who had followed them to the wharf. At Albany, Mary took passage in a canal-boat, and travelled many hundred miles westward; and always and everywhere, though attractive in appearance and so unskilled in the ways of the world, and utterly defenceless, she met but kindness and friendliness. There was about her the sacredness of sorrow; the impress of suffering on her brow, and the tearfulness of her downcast eye, were eloquent though mute appeals to the generous American heart.

She reached S———— at last, and was clasped, half fainting, in her brother's arms. Oh, who could measure his joy! He had heard of the wreck of the vessel, and supposed that all he held dear on earth had gone down with her.

Mary found a neat and comfortable home awaiting her, and soon life seemed not so cold around her; a few sunbeams fell upon her path, and the crushed flower, happiness, took root in her heart again. She wrote to, and heard from her lover in Ireland; his mother was still living, but very feeble, requiring his constant care.

It was on her second summer in America, that sorrow came once again to poor Mary Conway; came at the season when mourning and sadness seemed most unnatural-in gorgeous June, the festal month of all the year -came before the first flush of rose-time was past. Her pride, her dependence, her noble, devoted brother, came home, one noon, from his work, with a heavy eye, and the fevered blood rushing through his veins like lava, flung himself upon his bed, and never rose again.

One evening, as Mary sat by his side, watching him earnestly, for she knew that 'the hour was at hand,' he said faintly, 'Pray, my sister;' and the stricken girl knelt, and, lifting up her voice clearly and calmly, in a prayer all faith, and fervency, and submission, commended the passing spirit to its Creator. When she rose up, she looked upon the face of the dead.

On the day of the burial, little Alick was taken ill, with a milder form of the same disease, and there was none of his kindred, save his broken-hearted sister, to follow Willie Conway to the grave. She saw him laid to his rest, with an intense yearning to lie down beside him, and share his cold pillow; and she turned toward her desolate home, with a depth of anguish in her soul which only God could sound.

But the strength which had been hers at the death-bed scene, and at that awful moment when the first earth fell upon the coffin, now that all was over, forsook her utterly. She grew faint, reeled painfully, and would have fallen, but that one, who at that moment entered the grave-yard, sprang forward, and supported her. Mary, dear Mary!' said a familiar voice, 'oh, don't you know me? and is it so we meet at last!'

She looked up-it was Jamie, her Jamic from over the

sea.

My dear reader, I have not been playing upon your sympathies by fables. I have not been beguiling you with a fiction. I myself have heard the simple story which I have related, from the lips of Mary Burke. And would to Heaven a life so exalted by the grandeur of woman's love-prompted heroism, and made so serenely beautiful by filial piety and Christian resignation, might have some better chronicler, some more enduring memorial.

BOOKS IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

So multitudinous are the works published in the present day, that very few are aware of the value often attached to a single volume during the middle ages. Those who have free access to the literary treasures of the nineteenth century will hardly credit the fact, that the time was when the donation of a book to a religious house was considered as giving the donor a claim to eternal salvation; that the gift was regarded as one of such great importance, that the offering was made upon the high altar, amid every circumstance of pomp and pageantry; and that the prior and convent of Rochester once went the length of pronouncing an irrevocable sentence of eternal wo against any one who should purloin or conceal their Latin translation of the physics of Aristotle. In point of fact, so great was the labour expended by pious and holy men of old on the transcription of books for the good of their fellow-creatures, that in many cases whole lives were spent in this manner. Guido de Jars began to copy, on vellum, and with rich and elegant decorations, the Bible in his fortieth year, and he was in his ninetieth before he finished it. Thus did the suns of half a century rise and set ere this good man, amid the retirement of his monastic retreat, accomplished the task which, at a tolerably advanced period of human existence, he had set himself to execute.

When a book was to be sold, it was usual to assemble the chief persons in the district, in order that they might witness the transaction, and be prepared to testify that it had actually taken place. Among the royal manuscripts, there is a work thus marked:-This book of the sentences belongs to Master Robert, archdeacon of Lincoln, which he bought of Geoffrey the chaplain, brother of Henry, vicar of Northelkingston, in the presence of Master Robert de Lee, Master John of Lirling, Richard of Luda, clerk, Richard the almoner, the said Henry the vicar, and his clerk, and others: and the said archdeacon gave the said book to God and St Oswald, and to Peter, abbot of Barton, and the convent of Barden.'

Such is a sample of the importance attached to the sale and possession of books in past ages. So late as the reign of Henry VI., when the multiplication of manuscripts had, in consequence of the invention of paper, become greatly facilitated, we find the following order among the statutes of St Mary's College, Oxford:-'Let no scholar occupy a book in the library above one hour, or two hours at the most; lest others should be hindered from the use of the same.'

Among the drawbacks to the multiplication of books in the middle ages, may be mentioned the frequent scarcity of parchment; for want of which, in England, we are told that, when one Master Hugh, about the year 1126, was appointed by the convent of St Edmondsbury to write a copy of the Bible for their library, he was unable to do it. Warton has collected some particulars of a very interesting nature respecting the scarcity of books antecedent to the era of printing. It would appear that, in 855, Lupus, abbot of Ferriers in France, sent two of his monks to Pope Benedict III., begging a copy of Cicero de Oratore,' and of Quintilian's Institutes,' and some other books. As part of his message to his holiness, the abbot stated that there was no whole or complete copy of these works in all France. When Albert, abbot of Gemblours, had, with incredible labour and at immense expense, collected a hundred volumes on theological, and fifty on general subjects, he imagined that he had formed a splendid library. About 796, Charlemagne granted an unlimited right of hunting to the abbot and monks of Sithin, with the view to their making of the skins of the deer killed by them gloves, girdles, and covers for their books.

So scarce, in the beginning of the tenth century, were books in Spain, that one and the same copy of the Bible, of St Jerome's Epistles, and of some volumes of ecclesiastical offices and martyrologies, often served several different monasteries.

The modern reader may well be permitted to smile, when he is told that when, in 1072, Archbishop Lanfranc gave his constitutions to the monks of England, one of his injunctions was, that at the beginning of Lent each person should receive from the librarian of his convent a book, and that a whole year should be allowed him to read it. Nor is it less curious to be made aware, that, when John de Pontissara, bishop of Winchester, in 1299, borrowed of his cathedral convent of St Swithin, at Winchester, Bibliam Bene Glossatam,' that is, the Bible, with marginal annotations-in two large folio volumes-he was obliged to give a bond, drawn up with great solemnity, for its due return. In 1225, Roger de Tusula, dean of York, lent several Latin Bibles to the University of Oxford, on condition that the students who perused them should deposit a cautionary pledge; and previous to the year 1306 the library of that famed university itself consisted only of a few tracts, chained, or kept in chests, in the choir of St Mary's church. The prices of books, during the middle ages, were certainly commensurate with the inferences which might be drawn from their scarcity; and, in numerous instances, were so excessive as to be almost incredible. In 1174, Walter, prior of St Swithin's, at Winchester, and afterwards abbot of Westminster, gave twelve measures of barley, and a pall, on which was embroidered, in silver, the history of Birinus converting a Saxon king, to the monks of Dorchester, in Oxfordshire, in return for Bede's Homilies' and St Austin's Psalter.' About 1400, a copy of John de Meun's 'Roman de la Rose' was sold, before the palace-gate at Paris, for forty crowns, or £33:6:6d. And, in Edward III.'s reign, one hundred merks-equivalent to £1000were paid to Isabella de Lancaster, a nun of Ambresbury, for a book of romance purchased from her for the king's

use.

In every great abbey, there was an apartment called the Scriptorium,' where many writers were constantly employed in transcribing not only the service books for the choir, but also books for the library. Estates were often granted for the support of the Scriptorium. That at St Edmondsbury was endowed with two mills; and in 1171 the tithes of a rectory were appropriated to the cathedral convent of St Swithin, at Winchester, ad libros transcribendos.

LOVE.

The blaze of noon and twilight's flick'ring ray, The lamp of age and youth's new-risen dayAll fires burn out, except the fire of love, Which, kindled here, burns on to noon above.

WHITTLINGS FROM THE WEST.

BY ABEL LOG.

HEAP THE SEVENTIETII.

I was very much struck with the appearance of New York; it was so entirely different from any town or city I had ever before seen. The houses were so red; the windows so bright; the blinds so green; the bell-pulls and brass-plates so highly-polished; and the door-steps so prim-looking and so spotless. I quite supposed that I was about to take up my residence in a very exceptionable locality, and felt by no means displeased to find that I had imbibed a great many false notions respecting the ancient city of the Manhattoes.

'Come, come,' thought I, as I hurried back to the Astor House, and began to rummage over my portmanteau for letters of introduction, I can spend a month or two here very agreeably; the first step, however, will be to make a few acquaintances, without which the time, after all, would pass but dully.' But what had become of my packet of letters? They were not in my portmanteau. I had left them-I knew not where; perhaps at Buffalo; perhaps at Niagara; it might be in Montreal; and there was a strong probability of my having safely deposited them in some quiet corner of Butternut Castle! Here was a deathblow to all my anticipations of social enjoyment, and I paced the room in despair.

'No matter,' was my next reflection, 'I will trust to my usual luck. I have sometimes found chance acquaintances preferable to prescribed ones; so, as fortune has denied me one friend, like Horace Walpole (or was it Swift?), I will go to the nearest coffeehouse and take another. Meantime, I will leave this great noisy hotel, and get me to some quiet lodgings where I shall have peace and privacy.' I accordingly rang the bell, and inquired of the waiter if he knew of a respectable boarding-house to which he could recommend me. He ran to fetch a newspaper, and pointed to upwards of fifty advertisements, inserted by ladies who had just room left in their establishments for one domestically-disposed single gentleman: but I shook my head, and begged to hear of somebody who was not in the habit of advertising. I have it, then,' said the waiter; there is a most select house of the kind in Square; No. -; Miss Westbrook's. Shall I order a coach for you?' And, hastily defraying my bill, I was whirled away, portmanteau and all, to No. Square, in the suburbs, where I had an interview with a huge green parrot, of most impertinent propensities, and an elderly maiden lady, whose manners, personal appearance, and conversational powers, were all of a very superior order indeed. I expressed a desire to take up my abode under her roof, and she at once bowed acquiescence, but yet seemed to hesitate. As a mere matter of form, she begged a reference to some merchant, or other person, in the city. I could give none. 'Phew!' whistled the parrot. "What, have you no letters of introduction?' asked the elderly lady. I had, but they have been mislaid.' The parrot laughed heartily. And have you no friend in New York?' 'None.' The green parrot descended slowly from his perch, and, under the pretence of eating at the trough, said something of a rather disparag ing nature in an under tone. I felt a little perplexed, and, considering the business settled, was about to take my hat and departure, when the maiden lady said, with a smile which instantly re-assured me, she should for once dispense with the formality of a reference, and begged that I would look upon her house as my home. So I sent a servant to despatch the coachman, and went to dress for dinner.

And now, since America is my theme, shall I join issue with those high-minded and generous Englishmen, who have gone to enjoy the kindness and hospitality of our transatlantic brethren, and then, like little dogs that do not think of barking until they have got to the other side of the gate, returned home to abuse them at leisure? I have no such illiberal feelings, and I harbour no such uncharitable intentions. I consider our brother Jonathan a