1 877.] The Balance of Nature . 165 
“ Vipers abound in the Gironde, and the hedgehog is the 
declared enemy of the reptile. Since so many hedgehogs 
have been destroyed vipers have increased at a fearful rate.” 
We are inclined to think that the same cause may have led 
to the recent multiplication of vipers in England. Now, to 
form a correct estimate of the services of the hedgehog in 
keeping down this reptile, we must remember that the bite 
of the viper is not an insignificant affair. We have known 
fatal cases in Central and South-Eastern Europe. A young 
man died last summer from the bite of a viper, received on 
Leith Hill, Surrey, although medical aid was speedily pro- 
cured. A French physician, who has published an account 
of a large number of cases, finds that 20 per cent of the 
persons bitten succumb to the effects of the venom. Surely, 
then, a creature which rids us of an evil so serious might 
claim a better doom than extermination, however many eggs 
it might devour. We had rather be deprived of pheasants 
and partridges than be overrun with vipers. 
As regards the rat, no naturalist pleads for him. Water- 
ton and Mr. Morant are here perfectly agreed, although they 
differ as to the means to be employed for his destruction, and 
although the chapter which the latter allots to the rat is 
chiefly taken up with a denunciation of “ his supposed anti- 
dote, the cat.” One faCt is, however, certain; both rats 
and mice have of late years enormously increased, and have 
in some countries become a perfect plague. In Liddesdale 
the field-mice have devoured even the very roots of the 
grass. The fields are literally riddled with their holes, and 
the farmers are in despair. Is it not therefore possible that 
this increase is due to the destruction, or at least the de- 
crease, of their natural enemies, without any general and 
organised increase of artificial remedies against their en- 
croachments? The natural enemies of the rat and mouse 
are the terrier, cat, ferret, polecat, stoat, and weasel ; among 
birds, the larger hawks and the owls ; and among British 
reptiles, the viper. The first of these, the terrier, is, if we 
are not misinformed, now no longer to be openly and safely 
used for the destruction of rats, thanks to our humanita- 
rians, who always seleCt some objectionable objeCt for their 
sympathies— one day rats, another day garotters. It is cer- 
tainly hard if a farmer, on removing his stack or clearing 
out his barns, may not send Mustard and Pepper in to seize 
the grey marauders. The cat is decidedly under-rated by 
Mr. Morant. We certainly love her not, but so long as mice 
and rats are common so long Pussy will remain a necessary 
evil. The increase of field-mice has been most marked where 
