84 THE Brus INSCRIPTION AT ANNAN. 
and the lettering generally is pretty rough and unskilful. I 
don’t think one need postulate a development from the Saxon 
Ss : | 
** Yours ever, 
C. R: Prneseag 
With the quotation of these valuable technical opinions 
my postscript closes. There is left to me only the welcome 
duty of expressing my warmest thanks to Professor Halliday, 
Mr Hill, and Mr Peers. 
The Hedgehog. 
By Sir HERBERT MAXWELL, Bart. 
I feel grateful to the Lyon King of Arms who, in the 
sixteenth century, prescribed that the branch of the clan to 
which I belong should bear as “difference ’’ a hurcheon or 
hedgehog in the centre of the shield, to denote maternal descent 
from the family of Herries.* Grateful—inasmuch as in the 
short list of British mammals there is none more interesting to 
the naturalist than the hedgehog, not only for its remarkable 
defensive armature, but because the type has persisted almost 
unaltered throughout a vast geological period, involving 
changes of climate and alternation of temperature which sufficed 
to bring to a close gigantic races such as the Diplodoccus, 
Iguanodon, woolly elephant, and many others. In his monu- 
mental work on British mammals, Mr J. G. Millais refers to an 
animal resembling a hedgehog whereof the jawbone and teeth 
were found in Eocene beds.+ It is true that Sir Richard Owen 
inclined to consider these remains as showing closer affinity 
with the mole than with the hedgehog; but both these animals 
are Insectivores, probably owning common descent from a 
primitive marsupial ancestry. Anyhow ‘the creature reported 
on by Owen lived in an age when the London clay was being 
formed and the climate of England was tropical. Any smail 
“ The paternal coat of Herries is argent, three hurcheons 
(hedgehogs), sable; a piece of canting heraldry—Herries, quasi 
hérisson. 
+ That is, beds of the period following after the Chalk. 
