HEDGEHOG CARNIVOROUS. ] 15 



men are every now and then somewhat eccentric, so I left 

 the matter sub judice, until chance solved the mystery. 

 In a grass walk I saw some flattened plants of the com- 

 mon plantain withering and half dead; by the side of each 

 I found the hole, bored, as White supposed, by the long 

 upper mandible of the hoggy, but it was scarcely big 

 enough to admit a lead pencil, and so round and smooth 

 that I said directly to myself, 'tis the burrow of a night- 

 eating caterpillar : I got a trowel, and in a trice the fellow 

 was unearthed, and he afterwards turned to a ghost-moth* 

 or yellow underwing,f I can't say which, for both came 

 out in one cage. 



The hedgehog is properly a nocturnal carnivorous ani- 

 mal ; he prowls about at night, like an owl, looking after 

 the nests of pheasants, partridges, corncrakes and larks : 

 he kills, the old ones if he can, and sucks their eggs if he 

 can't : now and then he overruns a rabbit ; but his favour- 

 ite dish is a snake or an adder ; he catches these while 

 dozing under cover, and suffering from repletion caused by 

 four or five mice lying undigested in their stomachs, tail 

 on; and it is then that desperate fights ensue : it is then 

 that his armour stands hoggy in good stead : the deadly 



" Some years ago I had three or four hedgehogs, which I kept in a garden, 

 of which they had the range ; in the same garden I also had several rabhits : 

 after they had heen together for some days, I found that a rabhit was killed 

 every night, the remains of the skin and bones only being left : this I supposed 

 to be done by my neighbours' cats, and prepared to wage war on them accord- 

 ingly, but to my surprise, on peeping into the garden early one morning, I saw 

 a hedgehog busy at work with his nose buried in the fresh-cut throat of an ex- 

 piring rabbit ; and from further observations, I had no doubt that the hedge- 

 hogs had been guilty of all the murders. R. Daris,jnn. ; Clonmel." Zoo]. 

 1293. 



* Hepialus Hurnuli. E. N. f Triphaena pronuba. E. N. 



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