24 FOREST TITHES 
can depress his spine and squeeze through places one 
would have supposed too narrow for him. 
The distance this nimble creature can travel over 
is quite remarkable. Out in his own domain, the 
woods and the fields, he is perfectly harmless. Some 
hedgerows arc frequented by numbers of them. 
There they lie curled up among the dead leaves in 
the daytime. In other hedges you may search for 
them in vain. All would go well if the bristly little 
animal would keep his own place. But he will not do 
this. He sniffs until he finds something to his liking, 
to which he applies himself with pig-like determina- 
tion. Sometimes this happens to be a trap baited 
with portions of rabbit's flesh, where he gets caught, 
and whines most pitifully. 
But sometimes, when the farmer's wife goes to 
look at the coop out on the grass in front of the house, 
she finds her chicks killed and eaten, and their mother 
bitten and nearly dead with fright, the sole cause of 
the mischief being a great hedgehog, which is trying 
to get out of the coop : not so easy a matter now that 
his stomach is full of chicken as it was for him to 
creep through when empty. In such a case he is 
usually promptly settled by the points of a bright 
hayfork. 
But, after all, when the matter is fairly considered 
