18 Mr. Broderip on the importance of Facts 



With their upper mandible, which is much longer than their lower, 

 they bore under the plant, and so eat the root off upwards, leaving the 

 tuft of leaves untouched. In this respect they are serviceable, as they 

 destroy a very troublesome weed ; but they deface the walks in some 

 measure by digging little round holes. It appears, by the dung that 

 they drop upon the turf, that beetles are no inconsiderable part of their 

 food. In June last I procured a litter of four or five young hedge-hogs, 

 which appeared to be about five or six days old ; they, I find, like 

 puppies, are born blind, and could not see when they came to my hands. 

 No doubt their spines are soft and flexible at the time of their birth, or 

 else the poor dam would have had but a bad time of it in the critical 

 moment of parturition : but it is plain that they soon harden; for these 

 little pigs had such stiff prickles on their backs and sides, as would 

 easily have fetched blood, had they not been handled with caution. 

 Their spines are quite white at this age ; and they have little hanging 

 ears, which I do not remember to be discernible in the old ones. They 

 can, in part, at this age, draw their skin down over their faces ; but are 

 not able to contract themselves into a ball, as they do for the sake of 

 defence when full grown. The reason, I suppose, is, because the cu- 

 rious muscle that enables the creature to roll itself up in a ball was not 

 then arrived at its full tone and firmness. Hedge-hogs make a deep 

 and warm hybernaculum with leaves and moss, in which they conceal 

 themselves for the winter : but I never could find that they stored in 

 any winter provision, as some quadrupeds certainly do." 



So far Mr. White. It is, now, well known, that these ani- 

 mals eat not only beetles but other insects : many are brought to 

 Loudon by the country people and market gardeners ; and pur- 

 chased for the purpose of destroying the hordes of Blatta Orien- 

 t /lis (common cock-roach) which swarm in the kitchens of the 

 city. They are fed occasionally in this their domesticated state 

 with milk, of which they are very fond, but not so unsparingly as 

 to blunt the edge of their appetite for those pests, of which they 

 are the Thalabas. Cuvier, too, who has placed them as the first 

 genus of his twelfth family of Carnassiers (Les Insectivores) con- 

 firms the suspicion of White as to their insectivorous habits ; for 

 he says of the common hedgt-hog (Erinaceus Europceus) " aux 

 insectes qui font son regime ordinaire^ il mele les fruits qui lui 

 usent a un certain ^ge les poiutes de ses dents.* " 



* Regne Animal, torn. 1. p. 132. 



