o strong, that they cannot
readily leave their hold without the assistance of their wings, and if
shot when in this position, they remain suspended.

DR MAYERNE AND HIS BALSAM OF BATS.

Dr Mayerne, a learned English physician, who died, aged eighty-two, in
1655, showed by his prescriptions that his enlightenment was not more
than that of the prevailing ignorance of the period. The chief
ingredient in his gout-powder was "raspings of a human skull unburied;"
"but," writes Mr Jeaffreson,[27] "his sweetest compound was his 'balsam
of bats,' strongly recommended as an unguent for hypochondriacal
persons, into which entered adders, bats, sucking whelps, earth-worms,
hogs' grease, the marrow of a stag, and the thigh-bone of an ox."

No doubt the doctor imagined that a combination of the virulence,
flightiness, swiftness, strength, and other qualities of all these
animals would in some mysterious way be communicated to his melancholy
patient; and, indeed, by acting on the imagination of such persons a
favourable direction is given to their thoughts, and in this way their
severe malady may at times have been removed.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] Illustrated Proceedings of Zoological Society.

[24] This was written some years ago; but I was glad to see when last in
the Zoological Gardens, June 1866, another live specimen of a species of
fox bat.

[25] "Narrative of the Voyage," i., p. 96 (1852).

[26] "New Voyage round the World" (1698), p. 381.

[27] "A Book about Doctors," by J. Cordy Jeaffreson, i., p. 23.

HEDGEHOG.

This well-armed genus of insect-eating quadruped has sometimes given to
describing zoologists, at least so it is said, an opportunity of paying
a sly compliment, concealing an allusion to the _touchy_ or supposed
irritable disposition of the party after whom the species has been
named. When Southey wrote the following paragraph, he happily expressed
what is too commonly the meaning and wish of critics and criticised. If
my readers look into any system of mammalia of recent date, under the
article _Erinaceus_, he will see one or more instances of concealed
allusions to touchiness of disposition in the persons of the
naturalists, _honoured_ by the seeming compliment. The hedgehog is
itself a very useful and very harmless quadruped. It is of great use in
a garden, and also in a kitchen frequented by crickets or black-beetles.
Its food is chiefly grubs, insects, worms, and such like. The creature
is eas