510 SPINELESS HEDGEHOGS CHAP. 



The under surface of the tail is rough, and it is thought by 

 Dr. Blanford that it may be of use to the animal in climbing. 

 Its compressed terminal third and the fringe of stiff bristles on 

 the under surface of this indicate, according to Dr. Dobson, 

 powers of swimming, or at any rate a not very remote ancestry 

 of swimming creatures. It is purely insectivorous in diet. 



Erinaceus, including the Hedgehogs, is a widely distributed 

 genus Palaearctic, Oriental, and Ethiopian in range. There are 

 about twenty species. The familiar spines distinguish the Hedge- 

 hogs from their allies, as also the fact that they possess but thirty- 

 six teeth, the formula being I C -f Pm 4 M -. There are fifteen 



O ^ _|_ O 



or fourteen ribs, and the tail is very short, consisting of only 

 twelve vertebrae. As in Gymnura there is no caecum. The upper 

 canine has usually, as in other Erinaceidae, two roots, but not in 

 E. europaeus, which is one of the most modified of Hedgehogs. 



The Hedgehog is a more omnivorous creature than Gymnura. 

 It eats not only insects and slugs, but also chickens and young 

 game birds, and lastly vipers. Four, or in some cases as many 

 as five or six, young are produced at a birth ; they are blind, 

 with soft and flexible white spines. In hot and dry weather 

 Hedgehogs disappear ; they come forth in rainy weather. The 

 English Hedgehog, as is well known, hibernates. The Indian 

 species do not. The Hedgehog is occasionally spineless, which 

 condition may be regarded as an atavistic reversion. 1 



The Hedgehog has acquired the reputation of carrying off apples 

 transfixed upon its spines. Blumenbach thus quaintly describes 

 this and other habits of the animal, whose English name he gives 

 as " hedgidog " : " II se nourrit des productions des deux regnes 

 organises, miaule comme un chat, et peut avaler une quantite 

 enorme de mouches cantharides. II est certain qu'il pique les 

 fruits avec les epines de son dos, et les porte ainsi dans son 

 terrier." 2 



The Miocene Palaeoerinaceus is so little different from 

 Erinaceus that it is really hardly genetically separable. 

 Erinaceus is therefore clearly one of the oldest living genera 

 of mammals. 



Necrogymnura of the same epoch and the same beds (Quercy 

 Phosphorites) is doubtless an ancestral form. The palate is 



1 See Natural Science, xiii. 1898, p. 156. 

 - Manuel d'Hist. Nat. French trans, by Artaud, 1803. 



