384 NETHER LOCHABER. 



brought them there ? was the natural question j for a hedgehog, 

 dead or living, on the sea-shore under high-water mark, is as odd 

 and out-of-place an object as would be a mackerel far up the hills 

 amongst the heather. The following is probably a satisfactory 

 enough explanation of the mystery : Hedgehogs, which twenty 

 years ago were quite unknown in Lochaber, are now plentiful. A 

 pair, captured on Lord Abinger's lands at Torlundy, were sent to 

 us some dozen or fifteen years ago as a great curiosity ; and in 

 this district then they were a curiosity, so much so, that we can 

 recollect that during the time they remained in our possession as 

 exceedingly tame and most interesting pets, people from all parts 

 of the country used to come in order to have a close look at 

 the black-snouted, spine-armoured hedge pigs, as Shakespeare 

 calls them, the graineag or repulsive one of the midland High- 

 landers of Athole and Strathspey, where the animal has always 

 been plentiful. They have now become so common in this district 

 that a hedgehog is no more accounted a rarity than is a stoat or a 

 weasel. Hedgehogs are fond of making their cozy nests of moss, 

 grass fibres, and fallen leaves, near the roots of trees and bushes 

 growing on the banks of rivers and mountain streams. These last 

 have of late been frequently swollen beyond their usual bounds by 

 the heavy rains ; and in a spate of this kind poor Mrs. Hedgehog 

 and her youngsters were caught napping, and carried away by the 

 torrent to the sea, and ultimately cast ashore by the wind and 

 waves, where we found them in their winding-sheet of slimy sea- 

 wrack, and for a moment wondered how it came to pass that they 

 lay there, like poor Ophelia, " drown'd, drown'd." One remarkable 

 circumstance connected with these drowned hedgehogs was this : 

 we found to our surprise that we could handle them with impunity ; 

 their spines, so formidable in the living animal, being quite soft 

 and gelatinous to their very tips. This is by no means the case 

 with the spines of such hedgehogs as are killed by trap, or other- 



