Quadrupeds. 717 



cal gastronomy. So unaccountable indeed are sometimes the actions 

 both of man and beast, not only in the eating department, but also in 

 domestic arrangements, that we might really fancy the performers not 

 to be quite right in their heads." And Mr. Waterton illustrates this 

 by a story of his Tom cat, Sterne's ass, &c. But candour towards 

 the observations of 6 Laddie ' before alluded to, and truth itself, re- 

 quire I should admit that the poor hedgehog is guilty of derelictions 

 and actions unbecoming the apparent propriety of its quiet and inno- 

 cent demeanour. 



Although I trust the foregoing appeal may not be entirely lost, on 

 behalf of this shy and retiring little animal, yet I must confess, if it 

 takes habitually to such practices as those I am about to state, it is 

 deserving at least of reprehension, if not of a felon's death. But it 

 should be remembered, as has been observed by a great writer, that 

 (generally) " there is more to admire in the worst of men than to con- 

 demn," and perhaps it is so in animals : the good done by the hedge- 

 hogs in the destruction of beetles, and a variety of other similar food 

 on which it is known to live, must therefore be put as against the oc- 

 casional damage done by it to eggs and the young of game. The 

 facts which have recently come to my knowledge are the following. 

 A friend who resides in Yorkshire, had a brood of eleven young tur- 

 keys, and when not more than three weeks old, they were placed with 

 the hen bird in a small paddock, not far from a wood, and in a quiet 

 and secluded spot. One night, shortly after being placed there, the 

 bodies of seven of the young turkeys were found with their heads 

 eaten off, and the bodies left unmutilated in other respects. My 

 friend then desired four traps to be set for the mysterious midnight 

 visitor, baited with one of the dead turkeys, and in the trap the next 

 night was caught a large hedgehog !! Still, a hope sprung up that 

 this might have been by accident ; but when my friend went on to 

 state, that from the time that that event occurred, and after which the 

 four remaining turkeys were put back in the same place, and all con- 

 tinued to thrive and do well, and were never visited by any further 

 mischance, I felt my hopes of the hedgehog's innocence were crushed, 

 and I am no longer able, after the repeated other accusations brought 

 against it, to class it as an innoxious animal. 



Shakspeare mentions the whining of the hedgepig, — "Thrice and 

 once the hedgepig whin'd ; " and upon enquiring of a keeper's wife, 

 whose cottage is situate in a retired spot, if she ever heard or saw the 

 hedgehogs about on the tranquil spring or summer evenings, having 

 frequently done so, and caught them myself, she said her son, a boy, 



