Cows and Hedgehogs It is difficult to believe the discovery
announced by a distin- guished research committee which has been searching for the distributing agency of foot-and-mouth disease. The hedgehog is the alleged enemy. I should like to go a step further than the editorial comment on the discovery in The Field. It is not only not proven, but as good as disproved that the hedgehog ever sucks the milk of recumbent cows, though the belief has an old history. It may of course spread the disease in other ways, and if it is a regular host of the microbe would keep the malady In being. Many unlikely enemies exist. Your plums will be diseased if you grow anemones in their near neighbourhood. One of the rarer shrubs in our hedgerows is the common berberis or barberry (a prettier word) ; and its comparative rarity is due to wholesale eradication undertaken at the command of the old Board of Agriculture when it was found to be the host of
one of the worst fungus diseases of wheat. It is not altogether unlikely that a similar Jehad will be preached against the hedgehog.
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