8 NOTES ON SOME OF OUR BRITISH MAMMALS. 
as neatly as if a professional taxidermist had done the 
work—two of the legs even, had been skinned out, and the 
skin left reversed, and there was no vestige of the skull. 
About fifty yards further on the remains of a young rabbit 
which had been treated in a precisely similar manner were 
found: both creatures having been opened down the middle 
from between the fore to the hind legs. That this was 
not the work of a man—a gipsy for instance—was evident 
from the fact that the skins had neither been stretched, nor 
except the legs, reversed at all; and a gipsy would be 
careful not to leave such articles exposed. Neither do I 
think a dog would have done it so neatly. A fox or a 
badger was most probably the operator. 
The hedgehog rolls itself into a ball by the contraction 
of a muscle—the fanniculus caynosus,—the same muscle 
used by the dog when he shakes the moisture from his coat 
on leaving the water, and in the hedgehog this muscle 
forms a thick layer immediately under the skin and controls 
the spines whose knob-shaped bases are inserted in it. 
This muscle contracts very forcibly when removed with the 
skin after death. 
Some time ago I made a careful skin of a hedgehog 
which had been captured by a friendly keeper, in a trap 
set near a pheasant’s nest. Running short of preservative 
stuffing, I set off to the nearest village for a further supply, 
and on my return fonnd the skin firmly contracted into a 
ball with the spines projecting radially, and do what I 
could 1 was unable properly to restore the skin. 
With respect to the Mole (Talpa europea) I have very little 
to say, except that cream coloured varieties sometimes 
occur near Burton as in other districts. In Leicestershire 
white moles are not very uncommon ; indeed, a mole-catcher, 
formerly well-known in the district, took so many that he 
had a waist-coat and also a purse made from the skins of 
white moles alone. Mr. Brown records a white variety of 
