CARNARIA. 78 
three false molars, three molars bristling up; and a small tuberculated 
one*. 
E. europeus, L.; Buff. VIII. vi. (The Common Hedgehog), 
has the ears short; common in the woods and hedges; passes the 
winter in its burrow, whence it issues in the spring with its vesicule 
seminales(a@) of an incredible size and complication. To insects, 
which constitutes its ordinary food, it adds fruit, by which at a cer- 
tain age its teeth become worn(6). The skin was formerly used to 
dress hemp. 
E. auritus, Pall.; Schreb. CLXIII. (The Long-eared Hedge- 
hog). Smaller than the preceding; ears as large as the two-thirds 
of the head, otherwise similar to the europzus in form and habits. 
It is found from the north of the Caspian sea as far as Egypt in- 
clusively. 
The TEnreEcs, Cuv. (CENTENES, Jilig). 
The body of the Tenrec is covered with spines like the Hedgehog. It 
does not however possess the faculty of rolling itself so completely into a 
* Pallas has noted as an interesting fact, that the Hedgehog eats hundreds of 
Cantharides without inconvenience, while a single one produces the most horrible 
agony in the Dog and the Cat. 
(SF (a) The vesicule seminales are two membranous sacs, situated beneath the 
bladder and opening into the urethra or urinary passage. They are receptacles 
where the secretion, called the semen, is retained.— Ena. Ep. 
(& (+) The Hedgehog is very common in the woods, copses, orchards, and thick 
hedges in England, and its favourite food is beetles, to destroy which it is kept in 
kitchens. It appears from the account of this creature, given by White, of Selborne, 
that it can also feed on vegetables: for he states, that he has seen them engaged in 
the very curious process of devouring the root of a plantain. With the upper man- 
dible, which is longer than the lower one, they bore under the plant and so eat the 
root off upwards, leaving the tuft of leaves untouched. But a still more singular 
fact respecting the food of the Hedgehog, was discovered after an experiment by 
Professor Buckland, of the University of Oxford. This learned gentleman acciden- 
tally came to the knowledge of certain circumstances which led him to suspect that 
Hedgehogs preyed, occasionally at least, on snakes. In order to be satisfied of the 
truth of his conjecture, he placed the common-ringed snake (coluber natrix), and a 
hedgehog in a box together. The latter had been bred in an undomesticated state 
for some time in the Botanical Garden at Oxford, where there was no probability of 
its having been able to see snakes. At first, the Hedgehog, being rolled up, did not 
see the snake, when the Professor laid the former on the body of the latter, and in 
such a way as that the snake was in contact with that part of the ball where the head 
and tail met. As soon as the snake began to move, the hedgehog started, and open- 
ing himself up, gave the snake a vigorous bite, and instantly resumed his rolled 
state. It speedily repeated the bite, and followed it up at the same interval as be- 
fore with a third bite, by which the back of the snake was broken. The hedgehog 
then standing by the snake’s side, took up and passed through its jaws the whole 
body of the snake, cracking the bones audibly at every inch. ‘This preparatory pro- 
cess being completed, the Hedgehog commenced eating the serpent, beginning at the 
tip of the tail, and, proceeding without interruption, though slowly, consumed it, just 
as one eats a radish, until about half the victim disappeared. The Hedgehog could 
not go farther from mere repletion; but it finished the rest of the serpent on the 
following evening. 
It is a melancholy fact, that, in many parishes in England, even at the present mo- 
ment, a bounty is actually paid out of the parish rates for a dead Hedgehog, from the 
superstitious notion that it sucks the teats of animals.—ENa. Ep. 
