114 ANECDOTES OF THE HEDGEHOG. 



should take to cooling his copper with the roots of the old 

 gentleman's plantains. However, the tastes of pigs and 



to alter my opinion as to its entire harmlessness ; but the following fact, which 

 came under my own observation last week, so fully convicts the animal in ques- 

 tion of the charge of carnivorous habits, as to remove me from the list of his 

 defenders. While walking one evening, I overtook a large hedgehog, which 

 appeared just to have set out on its nocturnal rambles. I carried him home, 

 and gave him the run of a small walled garden. In the middle of the second 

 night of his captivity, I was awakened by the loud and alarmed cackling of a 

 couple of fowls, the fattening tenants of a coop in the same garden. On look- 

 ing out of my bed-room window, expecting to see some biped midnight plun- 

 derer, I could discover nothing but the dim outline of the coop. Upon listen- 

 ing, however, I heard the cries of the chickens repeated, but now with the 

 addition of a perfectly distinct sound, for literally 'thrice ; and once the hedge- 

 pig whined,' and I was no longer at a loss to guess the cause of the alarm of 

 the fowls. I immediately lighted a candle, dressed, and went out to inquire 

 more particularly into the affair, expecting to find the urchin at the bars, scar- 

 ing the imprisoned fowls. J found, however, that he had crept through a 

 space not quite three inches in width, into the coop, and that he was engaged 

 in close combat with one of the fowls, whose life's blood he would have drank, 

 had not my timely arrival prevented the tragedy ! From that moment the last 

 remaining spark of my love and respect to his race as an inoffensive and muck 

 maligned one, was quenched. Until then I cherished the hope expressed by 

 your correspondent, W. H. S., and by Mr. Waterton, in his very interesting 

 'Essays,' that the carnivorous habits of the hedgehog were the effects of confine- 

 ment, and a lack of their natural food, and did not arise from any innate pro- 

 pensity in them to prey upon these animals. But the case I have mentioned, 

 destroys, I think, even this charitable hope. Here was the very experiment 

 which W. H. S. suggested as one which ought to be adopted, in order ' to try 

 the matter quite fairly.' A hedgehog is placed in a walled garden, which is 

 known to contain beetles and other insects, he is also supplied with milk, yet 

 on the very next night, instead of quietly feeding on his supposed natural food, 

 he is discovered in the act of killing a full-grown fowl, having insinuated him- 

 self through the narrow bars of its coop for that purpose ! This is a case so 

 strong (and having seen it myself, I can vouch for its accuracy), that un- 

 less carnivorous propensities are natural to the hedgehog, it is impossible to 

 ascribe it to any other cause than Mr. Waterton's suggestion, that they were at 

 the time ' not quite right in their head. 1 If it was so with my hedgehog, I can 

 truly say there was method in his madness! John Pemberton Bartlett; Kingston 

 Rectory." Zool. 1204. 



