HEDGEHOGS.
[To THE EDITOR OP TILE "SPECTATOR."] read with great interest the article about hedgehogs in the Spectator of October 22nd. Allow me to send you the following anecdote about a hedgehog that came under my own notice. I was staying in North Wales one summer, and while wandering in the fields I came across a dead hedgehog near a wood. How it met with a violent death I know not. Not far off, and busily engaged in eating, were two baby hedgehogs, evidently the children of the deceased. I went up quite close to one without disturbing it, anxious to find out what it was eating. I lay down on the grass and put my face quite close to it; it still took no notice, and continued burrowing with its snout in the grass in the same way that a pig does when unencumbered by a ring in its nose. It was burrowing up the white roots of daisies, which it ate with evident pleasure, its little eyes glittering. I carried it home in my hand, and though I had gloves, its prickles caused me a good deal of pain. I thought it would interest a sick child at home. After it had paid its visit to the sick-room and had been duly admired, I carried it out on to the lawn. On look- ing at it, I found to my horror that it was covered with a mass of red fleas. I placed it hastily down and departed. Meeting the old Welsh gardener and telling him about it, he said : "It's just greeting after its mother, it is ; and that's its way of showing it." On coming down to breakfast next morning, there was my hedgehog on the lawn, and I crossed over to look at it. On my approach it only half shut up, and seemed encumbered with something. Turning it over with my toe, I discovered the hind-legs and long tail of a mouse sticking out of its mouth, which it could not close. Whether it had caught it in a fair chase, or whether it had only found it a corpse, I do not know, and no book I have ever found throws any light on the subject. Certainly a hedgehog, as your article truly says, is an animal whose habits and inner life are very little known.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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