40 THE HEDGEHOG. 



snails, beetles, worms j and, according to Sir William Jardine, it 

 will enter a hen-house, drive the hen off her nest, and devour 

 the eggs, and is frequently caught in traps baited with eggs for 

 carrion-crows. Pallas says it can eat hundreds of blistering 

 beetles (Cantharides) without inconvenience, though a single one 

 of these insects produces the most horrible pain in a dog or cat. 

 The hedgehog will also eat butcher's meat, either raw or cooked. 

 Its appetite is not, however, restricted to animal food ; for it will 

 eat the ripe fruit which falls from the trees, and when turning 

 up the earth, probably to find insects, it will eat the roots of 

 grass and other plants. Gilbert White says the hedgehog used 

 to eat the roots of the plantain in his garden by boring under 

 the plant with its upper jaw, which is much shorter than 

 the lower, and then eat off the root upwards, leaving the leaves 

 above ground untouched. In confinement the hedgehog will eat 

 sopped bread and potatoes. 



At the commencement of winter, the hedgehog retires into a 

 bed which it forms of moss, dried grass, and leaves, in which it 

 lies in a torpid state during the cold season. This winter-bed, 

 or hybernaculum, is generally made in a round hole, which it digs 

 at the bottom of a hedge. It is a notion as old as Pliny, that the 

 hedgehog lays up a store of food against winter ; but as it lies 

 torpid during that period, it has then no need of any provision. 



The female has four or five young ones at a birth. They are 

 at first blind and covered with white, soft, and flexible prickles, 

 which become hard in a few days. 



The hedgehog is easily tamed, and then becomes very familiar 

 in doors, fearlessly associating with the other domestic animals, 

 and eating with them from the same dish. In kitchens and 

 bake-houses it is of great service, in killing cockroaches and 

 crickets, both of which are very destructive insects. Bingley 

 says that, in 1799, Mr. Sample, of the Angel Inn, at Felton, 



of about half an inch. This done, it commenced eating the snake, begin- 

 ning at the tip of the tail, and proceeding without interruption, though 

 slowly (eating it upwards in the way Gilbert White noticed it to eat roots), 

 until it had despatched about one half of its victim, the remainder of which 

 it finished on the next evening. See the Zoological Journal, ii. p. 19. 



