72 THE SMALLER QUADRUPEDS, CONSIDERED 



of which there are three species, inhabits gardens, fields, and hedge- 

 rows, and lives on insects, and also on vegetable substances. It may 

 be caught by a water-trap in the same manner as the mole, or 

 by an inverted flower -pot sunk in the soil, and slightly covered 

 with litter or leaves, fig. 9, or checked by employing some of its 

 natural enemies. The hedgehog is found in hedges, thickets, &c., 

 remaining concealed in the daytime, but coming abroad at night 

 in quest of worms, snails, slugs, and even frogs and snakes. It also 

 lives on roots and fruits. Hedgehogs are occasionally kept in gardens 

 for destroying frogs, toads, lizards, snails, slugs, and worms ; and in 

 kitchens,, for devouring beetles, cockroaches, woodlice, and other ter- 

 restrial insects. Care is requisite, however, that they are not annoyed 

 by cats, which, though they cannot devour them, will, if not pre- 

 vented, soon force them to quit a habitation which is not natural to 

 them. The spines of the hedgehog are soft at its birth, and all in- 

 clining backwards ; but they become hard and sharp in twenty-four 

 hours. The bat, of which there are several species indigenous, lives 

 entirely on insects caught on the wing. It forms the natural food of 

 the owl. The dog, which belongs to this order, is too well known and 

 useful to be classed with such vermin. As the enemy of rats, rabbits, 

 and other vermin, and by his faithful watchfulness, he renders im- 

 portant services to horticulture. 



Glires (Dormice). The common squirrel feeds on birds, acorns, 

 nuts, and other fruits ; and though he is very ornamental in woods, he 

 should be but sparingly admitted into pleasure-grounds. The dor- 

 mouse lives on similar fruits and roots, and builds his nest in the hollows 

 of trees. The field-mouse may be caught and checked in the same 

 manner as the shrew. The field-mouse in the Forest of Dean had 

 become so destructive in 1813, that after trying traps, baits with poison, 

 dogs, cats, &c. with little success, at last the plan of catching it in 

 holes was hit upon. These holes were made from eighteen inches to 

 two feet long, sixteen or eighteen inches deep, about the width of a 

 spade at the top, fourteen or fifteen inches wide at the bottom, and 

 three or four inches longer at the bottom than at the top. The object 

 was to get the bottom of the hole three or four inches wider every 

 way than the top, and the sides firm, otherwise the mice would run 

 up the sides and get out again. The holes were made at twenty yards 

 apart each way, over a surface of about 3200 acres : 30,000 mice 

 were very soon caught, and the ground was freed from them 

 for two or three years. As many as fifteen have been found 

 in a hole in one night ; when not taken out soon, they fell on 

 and -ate each other. These mice, we are informed, used not only 

 to eat the acorns when newly planted, but to eat through the 

 stems of trees seven and eight feet high and an inch and a half 

 in diameter : the part eaten through was the collar or neck of 

 the tree. (Billington's ' Facts on Oaks and Trees, &c.,' p. 43.) One 

 of the simplest traps for mice is made of three bits of lath, sup- 

 porting a brick or slate, with the bait just above the ground 

 (fig. 10). No sooner do the mice nibble the bait than down conies the 



