TSE HEDGEHOG. 



«rer after be docile and obedient. This has been regarded aa 

 one of those funny double-edged sayings for which our forefathers 

 ■were so remarkable : " Mustard too weU mixed is poison ; " "A 

 stab in the throat is a sure cure for toothache," &e. ; and as it 

 is held impossible to nniY mustard too well, or to be conscious 

 of any pain, toothache included, after a severance of the wind- 

 pipe, so it was held with regard to the hedgehog, if you could 

 make him tipsy through strong drink (no easy matter, it would 

 seem, with a creature with a relish for corrosive sublimate), he 

 would be straightway rendered tame. The celebrated Dr. Ball 

 resolved to test the hedgehog's invulnerability to strong drinks, 

 and presented >n'in with a saucer of stiff whisky-and-water. 

 The doctor himself shall tell the result. 



" Like the beasts that so indulge, he was anything but him- 

 self, and his inane leaden eye was rendered still less pleasing by 

 its inane drunken expression. He staggered towards us with 

 a ridiculous get-out-of-my-way sort of manner; however, he 

 had not gone far before his potation produced all its effects — 

 he tottered, then fell on his side ; he was drunk in the fcdl 

 sense of the word, for he couldn't even hold by the ground. We 

 could then pxdl him about, open his mouth, twitch his whiskers, 

 &c., for he was unresisting. There was a strange expression 

 in his face of that self-confidence which we see in cowards in- 

 spired by drinking. We put him away, and in some twelve 

 hours afterwards found him running about, and, as was pre- 

 dicted, quite tame ; his spines lying so smoothly and regularly 

 that he could be stroked down the back and handled freely. 

 We turned him into the kitchen to kiU cockroaches, and knew 

 nothing farther about him." 



It is a pity that so interesting a narrative should end so un- 

 satisfactorily. Was he turned straight into the kitchen as soon 

 as he had partially recovered from his tipsy bout ? If so, but 

 little reliance can be placed in his meak demeanour. It is 

 possible that the recovering grog-drinker was merely qualmish, 

 and headachy, and ashamed. I have seen human hedgehogs 

 the morning following a debauch so prostrate and penitent as 

 even to submit to the mild reproaches of their well-meaning 

 wives without in any way " setting up their backs :" but, alas ! 

 they have relapsed, as might — for all Doctor Ball knows to the 

 contrary — the hedgehog in question, and remained throughout 

 his life a dissipated hedgehog, given rather to draining beer- 

 jugs and tumblers, and dozing under the cask in the cellar, 

 than to sobriety and beetle-catching. 



