THE HEDGEHOG. 87 
Unluckily this witness has chosen to remain anonymous, 
signing himself B.D., so one cannot cross-examine him. 
It is a matter which would be worth deciding, as any ob- 
servant person might do one way or other once for all. Per- 
sonally, I care not whether hedgehogs eat eggs or not: if people 
would but apply themselves to exterminating rats, foulest of 
four-footed vermin, there never would be any lack of eggs for 
omelettes. I am incapable of any but the kindliest feelings 
towards the hedgehog; nor can I look upon its delicately 
moulded, swart visage, its beady eyes, and tidy black nose and 
mittens without equal affection for the individual and respect for 
the race of Erinaceus, representing a pedigree beside which 
human aristocracy dwindles into mushrooms. 
But I wish they would reciprocate my feelings towards 
them a little more frankly. Fain would I have a numerous 
band of them in the flower garden as a check upon slugs and 
young mice; but although that garden is effectively fenced with 
wire netting against rabbits, never have I succeeded in keeping 
hedgehogs therein for more than a few nights. It is a mystery 
how they escape. If they burrowed under the wire, one would 
see the hole. One evening a hedgehog, nearly full-grown, was 
brought to me. After winning, as I thought, its confidence by 
an offering of bread and milk (a diet of which these animals are 
so fond that they will take it from the hand immediately after 
they are captured) the animal was placed for the night in a new 
dog kennel with concrete floor and iron rails, closed with sheet 
iron for eighteen inches from the ground level. The door was 
locked ; but before morning the captive had decamped, the only 
possible means of exit being an aperture exactly one inch and 
a half wide at the hinge of the iron door. 
Hedgehogs can swim well, though none has been actually 
seen to take to the water of its own free will. I once found five 
half-grown ones drowned in a wayside well, into which they had 
fallen. 
It is notable that, although there are fourteen species of 
Erinaceus in Europe, Asia, and Africa, the genus has no repre- 
sentative either on the American Continent nor in Australasia. 
