OF SELBORNE 63 



water. From hence I would conclude that these hirundines, and 

 the larger bats, are supported by some sorts of high-flying gnats, 

 scarabs, or phalisnce, that are of short continuance ; and that the 

 short stay of these strangers is regulated by the defect of their 

 food. 



By my journal it appears that curlews ^ clamoured on to October 

 the thirty-first ; since which I have not seen or heard any. 

 Swallows were observed on to November the third. 



LETTER XXVII. 



TO THE SAME. 



Dear Sir, 



Selborne, Feb. 22, 1770. 



Hedge-hogs abound in my gardens and fields. The manner in 

 which they eat their roots of the plantain in my grass-walks is 

 very curious : with their upper mandi]8le, 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, hke 

 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 but a bad time of it 

 in the critical moment of parturition : but it is plain that they 

 soon harden f 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. Thfir spines are quite white at this 



i[" Curlew" is always used by White for stone curlew. The common curlew 

 (Numenius arguata, L.), a very different bird, is not mentioned by him.] 



2 [" Rusticus " (Edward Newman) in his Letters says : " In a grass walk I sawsome 

 flattened plants of the common plantain withering and half dead ; by the side of 

 each I found the hole bored, as White supposed, by the long upper mandible of 

 ' Hoggy ,' but it was scarcely big enough to admit a lead pencil, and so round and 

 smooth that I said directly to myself, ' 'Tis the burrow of a night-eating caterpillar '. 

 I got a trowel and in a trice the fellow was unearthed ; and he afterwards turned to 

 a ' ghost-moth' or 'yellow underwing,' I cannot say which, for both came out in 

 one cage." — Quoted from Harting's ed.] 



