256 THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN. 



abroad, and probably on a far more extensive 

 scale. I have known a whole family of badgers 

 to be wiped out for alleged misdeeds which con- 

 tinued after the poor creatures had ceased to exist, 

 and which were doubtless attributable to a wild 

 cat of the 'tarne' variety. I have even found 

 a landowner to urge the destruction of hedgehogs 

 on the ground that they destroyed game-birds' 

 nests, while on a single one of his farms there 

 were sufficient half-wild cats to exterminate every 

 pheasant-chick within a radius of miles ! For the 

 half-wild cat, like the hedgehog, attacks at the 

 very root ; she takes not one or two, but the whole 

 brood. 



ASSOCIATIONS WITH THE GRAY RAT. 



But one thing may be said in favour of hedge- 

 hogs on game-reserves that where they exist in 

 any numbers ' summer ' rats do not readily take 

 up their quarters. This is not on account of any 

 particular dread on the part of rats of meeting a 

 hedgehog, for of all creatures the gray rat is best 

 able to look after itself, but simply because rats 

 and hedgehogs do not make good neighbours. 

 The rats know that it is of no use arguing with a 

 hedgehog; when the latter wants a thing he goes 

 right in, and either he gets it straight away or it 

 means a fight, and from a rat's point of view a 

 fight with a hedgehog is not worth while. I have 

 known a certain little valley in the midst of a 

 pheasant-covert to become literally alive with rats 

 during the summer months, and doubtless the 

 damage they did at night-time was enormous. 

 Had there been a family of hedgehogs resident in 

 that valley the rat plague would never have oc- 

 curred ; for, knowing that at all events the hedge- 



