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FARM VERMIN, HELPFUL AND HURTFUL. 



people ever seek his merits to disclose, or draw his 

 frailties " from their prickly abode. Yet like most of 

 our beasts and birds, he has his faults as well as his 

 virtues. Rolled up comfortably at the bottom of some 

 dry leaf-filled ditch, or perhaps snugly laid up in moss 

 and leaves in a deserted rabbit burrow, the hedgehog passes 

 away the winter months in sleep, and even when he comes 

 to life again in the spring he is a purely nocturnal or 



THE HEDGEHOG. 



crepuscular animal ; so that, unless he is routed out by 

 a dog, or mown out of grass or corn by the mower or 

 reaper, we seldom see anything of him except in the long 

 summer evenings. Our midsummer nights in the Northern 

 hemisphere are so light that night animals have no choice 

 there but to show themselves or starve. The hedgehog can 

 afford to starve least of all, for he has to lay up a store of 

 fat for the ensuing winter's hibernation. So in the dewy 



