THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN 67 



wild hedgehogs eat a black slug of a kind which he believes 

 that most birds reject.^ 



Most authorities agree in stating that shrew-meat is one of 

 the few possible foods that a hedgehog cannot face. Sir 

 Oswald Mosley ^ stated that one died under his observation 

 within an hour of its having mouthed a shrew's carcase, 

 but it must have owed its death to some other cause. It would 

 hardly have been abroad at noon if in good health. Be that as 

 it may, the late Robert Service threw the strong weight of 

 his testimony into the opposite scale, writing me that he had 

 not the least doubt that the Hedgehog is the principal cause of 

 the mortality which is so well known amongst the shrews 

 at certain seasons. Unfortunately, he was never actually 

 present at such a tragedy, and could not be sure that the supposed 

 victims were ever eaten. It will, therefore, be well to suspend 

 judgment on this point. 



Service found that hedgehogs destroy a good many eggs 

 of birds nesting on the ground, especially skylarks, but that 

 the destruction is mainly done on the day or evening 

 before the eggs are due to hatch. He believed that, perhaps, 

 the condition of the eggs is recognised by some peculiarity of 

 smell, since in his experience young birds or fresher eggs were 

 rarely taken. 



Hedgehogs are as quarrelsome as other insectivores. 

 Alston ^ remarked that his captives, when fighting, tried 

 to seize each other either by a hind leg or by the unprotected 

 skin of the belly, and Service * was much entertained by 

 the encounters of wild ones, apparently all males. On 

 15th May he found a couple "snuffling'* at each other, and 

 they then began a monotonous "mill-wheel walk" with 

 noses opposed. This circling continued for three-quarters 

 of an hour by the watch, and after an absence of twenty minutes 

 they were found sixty yards away, still rolling over and 

 worrying each other as viciously as ever he had seen dogs 

 fighting. Each had hold of the other by a fore paw, and 

 was shaking it as a terrier does a rat, puffing and blowing 

 with the exertion. Sometimes one was uppermost, sometimes 



' Irish Naturalist, 1900, 50. - Zoologist, 1854, 4477. 



2 Zoologist, 1866, 59. < Ann. Scott. Nat. Hist., 1901, 232-3. 



