3 2 ° 
INSECTIVORES. 
many as eight. Occasionally a second litter is produced during the autumn; and 
it is believed that the period of gestation is not longer than a month. The new¬ 
born young are almost naked, and their imperfect spines are soft, flexible, and 
white, although rapidly hardening in the course of a few days. They are at first 
totally blind, and quite incapable of rolling themselves up. The nest in which the 
young are born is carefully constructed, and is said to be always protected from 
rain by an efficient roof. In winter the European hedgehog hibernates completely, 
laying up no store of food, but retiring to a nest of moss and leaves, where, rolled 
up in a ball, it lies torpid till awakened by the returning warmth of spring. As 
HEDGEHOG AND YOUNG. 
a rule, hedgehogs are comparatively silent creatures, but on occasions they give 
vent to a sound said to be something between a grunt and a low piping squeak. 
The range of the hedgehog in Britain includes the whole of 
Distribution. & ® 
England and portions of Ireland, but does not extend beyond the 
middle of Scotland; its presence in the Shetland Islands being probably due 
to human introduction. Eastwards it extends to Eastern China and Amurland, 
and it also embraces the region from the sixty-third parallel of latitude in 
the Scandinavian Peninsula, to Southern Italy, Asia Minor, and Syria. Not 
only is the European hedgehog found in the lowlands of the regions over which 
it extends, but in the Alps it ascends to an elevation of six thousand feet, and in 
the Caucasus to upwards of eight thousand feet above the sea-level. 
Altogether there are about twenty known species of hedgehogs, and among 
these the European form is in some respects quite peculiar. Its fur mingled 
with the spines is very coarse and harsh, and the upper tusk, or canine tooth 
(the fourth tooth from the extremity of the muzzle), is deserted by a single root, 
