320 



INSECTIVORES. 



many as eight. Occasionally a second litter is produced during the autumn ; and 

 it is believed that the period of gestation is not longer than a month. The new- 

 born young are almost naked, and their imperfect spines are soft, flexible, and 

 white, although rapidly hardening in the course of a few days. They are at first 

 totally blind, and quite incapable of rolling themselves up. The nest in which the 

 young are born is carefully constructed, and is said to be always protected from 

 rain by an efficient roof. In winter the European hedgehog hibernates completely, 

 laying up no store of food, but retiring to a nest of moss and leaves, where, rolled 

 up in a ball, it lies torpid till awakened by the returning warmth of spring. As 



HEDGEHOG AND YOUNG. 



Distribution. 



a rule, hedgehogs are comparatively silent creatures, but on occasions they give 

 vent to a sound said to be something between a grunt and a low piping squeak. 



The range of the hedgehog in Britain includes the whole of 

 England and portions of Ireland, but does not extend beyond the 

 middle of Scotland ; its presence in the Shetland Islands being probably due 

 to human introduction. Eastwards it extends to Eastern China and Amurland, 

 and it also embraces the region from the sixty-third parallel of latitude in 

 the Scandinavian Peninsula, to Southern Italy, Asia Minor, and Syria. Not 

 only is the European hedgehog found in the lowlands of the regions over which 

 it extends, but in the Alps it ascends to an elevation of six thousand feet, and in 

 the Caucasus to upwards of eight thousand feet above the sea-level. 



Altogether there are nearly twenty known species of hedgehogs, and among 

 these the European form is in some respects quite peculiar. Its fur mingled 

 with the spines is very coarse and harsh, and the upper tusk, or canine tooth 

 (the fourth tooth from the extremity of the muzzle), is inserted by a single root, 



