THE HEDGEHOG OR URCHIN 59 



capable of emitting an unpleasant smell under the influence of 

 fright, will probably be regarded as controversial. It is so in- 

 teresting, that Mr Moffat's observations may be given in detail 

 in the hope that further evidence, corroboratory or the reverse, 

 may be forthcoming. The animal is not usually regarded as 

 particularly odoriferous, and its presence may not appeal 

 directly to human nostrils ; but there can be no doubt that it 

 does possess a peculiar, definite, and comparatively strong 

 odour, which is so unmistakable that dogs can be readily 

 trained to hunt for it.^ The possession of a peculiar and 

 unpleasant odour by an animal which is at the same time 

 palatable, painful to handle, and easy to see or find in the open 

 at night, would be a natural combination of characters already 

 shown by Mr Pocock to occur in the somewhat similarly 

 equipped porcupines,^ in which, however, it is accompanied by 

 even more conspicuous coloration. 



Mr Moffat's experience was obtained by putting a hedgehog 

 into a water-butt for the purpose of seeing it swim. Imme- 

 diately on finding itself in the water, the animal emitted an 

 effluvium so powerful that he had to run back five or six 

 yards to find an atmosphere in which he could breathe. " It 

 was quite an unpleasant work," he writes, "afterwards to 

 release the poor creature from its swimming-bath. . . ." 

 He adds that he is not morbidly sensitive to odours, but 

 the result of his experiment as related above beat anything 

 on the part of a live animal that he ever encountered before or 

 since. Mr Moffat subsequently gave another hedgehog a 

 bath to see if it also would act skunk, but he was disappointed 

 to find that it did not. But his previous experience is partially 

 borne out by his observation that a fairly strong odour is 

 sometimes produced when hedgehogs are fighting at night, 

 but this is "nothing whatever" to the stench made by the 

 animal that he put into water. 



It looks as if the animal's general behavour is guided 



> As pointed out by many writers ; see Knapp, Journal of a Naturalist, ed. 2, 

 1829, 135; also, Sir William Jardine's Supplementary Notes to Jesse's edition of 

 White's Selborne, 1854, 404-5. It is "A peculiar, frousty, semi-sweet smell, which 

 also clings to the droppings." — Cocks, in lit. 



2 Of the genus Hystrix; see Proc. Zool. Soc. (London), 1906, 902, published 

 April 1907, also 1908, 946, published April 1909 ; and Field, nth March 191 1, 489. 



