128 THE HEDGEHOG 



for all. Personally, I care not whether hedgehogs eat 

 eggs or not : if people would but apply themselves to 

 exterminating rats, foulest of four-footed vermin, there 

 never would be any lack of eggs for omelettes. I am 

 incapable of any but the kindliest feelings towards the 

 hedgehog ; nor can I look upon its delicately-moulded, 

 swart visage, its beady eyes, and tidy black hose and 

 mittens without equal affection for the individual 

 and respect for the race of Erinaceus, representing a 

 pedigree beside which human aristocracy seems an 

 affair of yesterday. 



But I wish they would reciprocate my feelings 

 towards them a little more frankly. Fain would I 

 have a numerous band of them in the flower-garden 

 as a check upon slugs and young mice ; but although 

 that garden is effectively fenced with wire-netting 

 against rabbits, never have I succeeded in keeping 

 hedgehogs therein for more than a few nights. It is 

 a mystery how they escape. If they burrowed under 

 the- wire, one would see the hole. One evening a 

 hedgehog, nearly full-grown, was brought to me. After 

 winning, as I thought, its confidence by an offering of 

 bread and milk (a diet of which these animals are so 

 fond that they will take it from the hand immediately 

 after they are captured), the animal was placed for the 

 night in a new dog-kennel with concrete floor and iron 

 rails, closed with sheet-iron for eighteen inches from 

 the ground level. The door was locked; but before 

 morning the captive had decamped, the only possible 

 means of exit being an aperture exactly one inch and a 

 half wide at the hinge of the iron door. 



