THE HEDGEHOG.
Ito THE EDITOR OF THE " EPECTLTOIC1 Sza,—I was walking along a dark lane the other night when I suddenly heard the noise of what appeared to be the heavy breathing of a superman in the hedge. This heavy breathing continued while I walked for about 100 yards, and then for another 100 yards it sounded as if this breathing, which had become muck louder, was abreast of me. After that the sound gradually seemed to be left behind. The sound was so uncanny, that had I been by myself I might well have become alarmed, but luckily the person I was walking with said it was only a hedgehog, as she had experienced the same thing once at Bournemouth, when she and a sister were woke up in the night by this sound, and thought it was some man asleep in the laurels. The same thing occurred the next night, and then they discovered, to their great relief, that it was after all only a hedgehog. Have any of your readers ever experienced the same thing, as I have never read of it in any book? It seemed at the time so uncanny that one was almost beginning to think it was a supernatural phenomenon, but, like most "supernatural " phenomena, it turned out to have a natural cause. A sleeping hedgehog would be invaluable to the spiritualists were they to place one in the midst of their darkened chamber, though I fear, if the lights were not turned on, the audience would soon scatter far and wide, and leave that hedgehog in peace and ouietness!—I am, Sir, do.,
A. H. S. D.
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