Vermin of the Farm. 
469 
the amount of exercise he takes. So far as I can ascertain, from the time 
darkness sets in up to six o’clock in the morning he never stops going, 
trotting along at a good six miles an hour, not round and round the walls, 
but heating and quartering the yard as well as any pointer ever did a field, 
evidently looking for food ; and, at the rate he goes, he could beat every 
inch of twenty acres in a night. 
“ His eyesight appears to be bad, but bis hearing and nose are exquisite. 
Touch a window, and be stops instantly, well on his haunches, his head 
up, and the bristles protruding from his forehead, looking just like a 
little boar at bay ; when, having listened for a while, off he trots again as 
hard as ever, standing higher on his legs, and having a longer tail than 
you would expect. Nor— though you may be looking at him from a 
window not a yard over his head — does he take any notice, if you make no 
noise. 
“ Throw a small bird immediately before him as he runs, and he seems to 
take no notice of it — the scent has not had time to emanate. Away he 
goes, quartering the yard, and passes, perhaps, 8 feet or 10 feet from it at 
the next turn. The air, however, has driven the scent that way, and as he 
crosses it he stops as dead as Mr. Laverack's best dog. No pot-hunter is 
Master Piggy ; up goes his head, the end of his nose twisting about in a 
curious way ; round he turns, and higlier he stands on his toes, until he has 
made out the direction of fhe game ; and then he walks straight on and 
forthwith proceeds to devour it. Nor is his mouth so small as is generally 
supposed. He can take a small bird clean into his mouth, and crack its 
bones like any cat.” 
In connection with the food of hedgehogs, another point 
deserves a passing notice. “ The manner in which they eat the 
roots of the plantain in my garden,” says Gilbert White, “ is 
very curious,” and he proceeds to describe it. This passage is 
quoted by Bell in the second edition of his British Quadrupeds 
(1874) without contradiction ; but the author of the Letters of 
Busticus found this to be a mistake. He discovered that it was 
not the hedgehog, but a night-feeding caterpillar, which devoured 
the root upwards, leaving the tuft of leaves untouched. 
Unlike many of the rodents, the hedgehog lays up no stores 
for the winter, but passes that season in a state of hybernation 
or torpor, rolled up in a snug nest of dead leaves, grass, and 
sometimes moss. Bell states in his British Quadrupeds (2nd 
ed. 1874) that “ the female hedgehog produces from two to four 
young early in the summer,” but two corrections are needed 
in this statement. The number of young is oftener five or 
six (we have known two cases in which seven were found 
in a litter), and the young are produced in autumn as well as 
in early summer. 
Looking at the facts here adduced,' and reviewing the 
animal’s bill of fare, it can scarcely be said that the hedgehog 
is harmless. On the contrary, an impartial consideration of its 
habits leads to the conclusion that it is not unreasonably in- 
cluded amongst “ Vermin of the Farm.” But, like every living 
