  The second Painlev\'e hierarchy is defined as the hierarchy of ordinary
differential equations obtained by similarity reduction from the modified
Korteweg-de Vries hierarchy. Its first member is the well-known second
Painlev\'e equation, P2.
  In this paper we use this hierarchy in order to illustrate our application of
the truncation procedure in Painlev\'e analysis to ordinary differential
equations. We extend these techniques in order to derive auto-B\"acklund
transformations for the second Painlev\'e hierarchy. We also derive a number of
other B\"acklund transformations, including a B\"acklund transformation onto a
hierarchy of P34 equations, and a little known B\"acklund transformation for P2
itself.
  We then use our results on B\"acklund transformations to obtain, for each
member of the P2 hierarchy, a sequence of special integrals.
