I read with much pleasure the article in your Number, 574, on Nutria Fur:  it was, to me, particularly acceptable, as I have been connected for the last ten years with an establishment where, on an average, 150,000 Nutria Skins are annually manufactured, and the wool cut for the use of hatters.  I have searched every book of travels in Brazil, &c., that I could procure, and the chief English works on zoology, without being able to gather any description of the scientific name or habits of the animal.  All the information I could collect was from the captains of various vessels that had visited Buenos Ayres, and brought cargoes of skins; but their accounts were extremely vague and unsatisfactory.

I perceive, however, that you have overlooked a peculiarity generally attributed to the animal, which, if true, is, in my opinion, deserving notice:  viz.—­the position of the female’s teats, which are not placed on the belly, as with most animals, but on the side, approaching to the back, by which means it is enabled to suckle its young on both sides at once, whilst swimming on the surface of the water; and it presents, I have understood, a singular group to the observant traveller.

I have sent the skin of a female Nutria herewith, for your inspection, as regards the teats, &c. (from which the fur has been cut by machinery,) with a small sample of the belly fur, prepared for the covering of a hat; the wholesale price of the latter is now three guineas per lb.:  it is used as a substitute for beaver-wool on second-rate hats.  Our French correspondents term the skins “Ratgondin.”

BENJAMIN NORRIS, JUN.

Windsor Place, Southwark Bridge Road.

*** We thank our intelligent correspondent for this communication, as well as for the skin and fur.  The skin is rather above the usual size:  its length is 26 inches, the tail being cut off; as is always done before the skins are exported:  the width of the skin is 15 inches; the teats, nine in number, are in two rows, each row being about 2-1/2 inches from the centre of the back, and about 5 inches from the centre of the belly; so that they are, as our correspondent observes, on the side, approaching to the back nearer by half than to the belly.  This position of the teats appears to correspond with the animal’s habit of suckling its young whilst swimming.

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THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

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THE CHOLERA MOUNT.

Lines on the Burying-Place for Patients who have Died of Cholera; a pleasant eminence in Sheffield Park.

By James Montgomery, Esq.