ANTIQUITY OF HEDGEHOGS 
vipers compensates for occasional depredations upon outlying 
nests of game birds and poultry. When it discovers a viper 
it will pursue it, smell at and lick it, not minding the “striking” 
of this poisonous serpent, and at last will seize and bite it all 
along the back, breaking the bones in many places, and then 
proceed to devour it. Almost as many fables and errors are 
current among the peasantry in regard to the hedgehog as to the 
shrew. 
In the Malayan region is found a related genus (Gymnura); 
and fossils show that the hedgehog family (Erinaceidz) is one 
of the oldest known among mammals, and has undergone 
very little change since the Miocene era, which illustrates 
how when nature hits upon a good thing it preserves it! 
HEAD AND PALM OF FORE FOOT OF AMERICAN GARDEN MOLE. 
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