78 NATURAL HISTORY 



LETTER XXVII. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, Feb. 22, 1770. 

 DEAR SIR, 



HEDGE-HOGS abound in my gardens and fields. The manner 

 in which they eat their roots of the plantain in my grass- 

 walks is very curious : with their upper mandible, which is 

 much longer than their lower, they bore under the plant, and 

 so eat the root off upwards, leaving the tuft of leaves un- 

 touched. In this respect they are serviceable, as they destroy 

 a very troublesome weed; but they deface the walks in some 

 measure by digging little round holes. It appears, by the 

 dung that they drop upon the turf, that beetles are no incon- 

 siderable part of their food. In June last I procured a litter 

 of four or five young hedge-hogs, which appeared to be about 

 five or six days old ; they, I find, like puppies, are born blind, 

 and could not see when they came to my hands. No doubt 

 their spines are soft and flexible at the time of their birth, or 

 else the poor dam would have but a bad time of it in the cri- 

 tical moment of parturition : but it is plain that they soon 

 harden ; for these little pigs had such stiff prickles on their 

 backs and sides as would easily have fetched blood, had they 

 not been handled with caution. Their spines are quite white 

 at this age ; and they have little hanging ears, which I do not 

 remember to be discernible in the old ones. They can, in 

 part, at this age draw their skin down over their faces ; but 

 are not able to contract themselves into a ball, as they do, for 

 the sake of defence, when full grown. The reason, I suppose, 

 is, because the curious muscle that enables the creature to roll 

 itself up into a ball was not then arrived at it's full tone and 

 firmness *. Hedge-hogs make a deep and warm liybernaculum 



* [There is one use of the hedgehog's armour which I have never seen 

 mentioned, but which I had repeated opportunities of verifying in one 

 which I kept myself. Running about a small yard at the back of the 



