See Hystrix; Mammalia Index.

PORCUPINE-Man, the name by which one Edward Lambert, who had a disfigured skin, went in London. We have the following account of him in the Philosophical Transactions for 1755, by Mr Henry Baker, F.R.S. "He is now (says he) 40 years of age, and it is 24 years since he was first shown 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 with excrescences that resemble an innumerable company of warts, 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 ruffling 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 a 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 smallpox, and he has been twice salivated, in hopes to get rid of this disagreeable covering; but though just when the pustules of the smallpox had healed off, and immediately after his salivation, his skin appeared white and smooth, yet the excrescences soon returned by 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 his case more extraordinary than all the rest; this man has had six children, and all of them had the same rugged covering as himself, which came on like his own about nine weeks after the birth. Of these children only one is now living, a pretty boy; who was shown with his father. It appears therefore, as Mr Baker remarks, that a race of people might be propagated by this man, as different from other men as an African is from an Englishman; and that if this should have happened in any former age, and the accidental original have been forgotten, there would be the same objections against their being derived from the same common stock with others: it must therefore be admitted possible, that the differences now subsisting between one part of mankind and another may have been produced by some such accidental cause, long after the earth has been peopled by one common progenitor."