Ir we consider the animal creation on a broad scale, the aggregate of living beings will be found to be the devourers and destroyers of others.

The animals of the order on the examination of which we have now entered, are specially appointed, as their name implies, to check the overwhelming increase of the insect tribes, which, though individually insignificant, would still, if permitted to multiply uncontrolled, render the labours of man, however energetic, absolutely fruitless.

Let us, for example, give a few passages from some Travels in Abyssinia, some two hundred years ago:-"In this country, and in all the dominions of Prete Janin, is a very great and horrible plague, which is an innumerable company of locusts, which eat and consume all the corn and trees; and the number of them is so great as it is incredible; and with their multitudes they cover the earth, and fill the air in such wise, that it is a hard matter to be able to see the sun. And again, I say it is an incredible thing to him that hath not seen it.

"And if the damage that they do were general through all the provinces and realms of Prete Janin, they would perish with famine, and it would be impossible to inhabit the same. But one year they destroy one province, and in another some other. Sometimes in two or three of these provinces, and wherever they go, the country remaineth more ruinate and destroyed than if it had been set on fire. . . . Oftentimes we heard say, such a country, or such a realm, is destroyed with locusts. While we abode in the town of Barua, we saw the sign of the sun and the shadow of the earth which was all yellow-that is, the approach of the locusts was known the day beforehand by the yellow tinge of the heavens, and the ground becoming yellow through the light which reverberateth from their wings." No wonder this writer adds, "whereat the people were half dead for sorrow. The next day the number of these vermin which came was incredible, which to our judgment covered four-and-twenty miles in compass, according to what we were afterwards informed."

Yet this is only one instance out of many that might be adduced. In 1478, more than 30,000 persons are said to have perished from famine, chiefly occasioned by the depredations of locusts in the Venetian territory alone. Wherever they alight every vegetable substance disappears with inconceivable rapidity. The most beautiful and highly cultivated lands assume the aspect of a desert, and

* Insectivora.

the trees and land as in the midst of winter, stripped of all their leaves. After devouring the fruits and the foliage, the locusts attack the buds and the bark, and do not even spare the thatch of the houses. The most poisonous, caustic, or bitter plants, as well as the most juicy and nutritious, are equally consumed; and thus, though "the land be as the Garden of Eden before there," yet behind them it is "a desolate wilderness."

Hence the graphic and truthful words of Southey :—

"Then Moath pointed where a cloud

Of locusts from the desolated fields
Of Syria, wing'd their way.
Lo, how created things

Obey the written doom!'

"Onward they came, a dark continuous cloud
Of congregated myriads numberless;
The rushing of whose wings was as the sound
Of some broad river, headlong in its course
Plung'd from a mountain summit; or the roar
Of a wild ocean in the autumnal storm,
Shattering its billows on a shore of rocks.
Onward they came-the winds impelled them on;
Their work was done, their path of ruin past,
Their graves were ready in the wilderness." *

New calamities, however, are occasioned by the death of these swarms of locusts, for the decomposition of their bodies fills the air with pestilential miasma, occasioning epidemic maladies, the ravages of which have been compared with those of the plague. Thus famine and death follow in their train; and instances are not of rare occurrence in the East, in which locusts have depopulated not only villages, but entire districts.

Happily, these insect devastators have a great number of enemics. Birds, lizards, hogs, foxes, and even frogs devour a vast number of them. In the East they are used as an article of food. They are sold as common eatables in the bazaar of Bagdad, and Oriental cooks have various ways of preparing them for use. A high wind, a cold rain, or a tempest, also destroys them by millions. Other insects, annoying even in small numbers, would be proportionately troublesome and injurious were their increase unchecked; hence the provision of animals who make them their prey, and who have been designated as Insectivora, or Insect-Eaters.

It might be supposed that among these creatures the bats would be classed. True it is, as we have already seen, that insects are commonly the food of many species, who render us a great service in diminishing the numbers of these tenants of the air. But it is equally clear that multitudes of them subsist on vegetable products, while some have a propensity for eating flesh, and might so far have a place assigned them among the Carnivora. Besides, the entire structure, as well as the habits of bats, are so very peculiar, that they are properly assigned a place of their own among the diversified tribes of the Animal Kingdom.

As we contemplate the Insectivora we cannot discover in them anything powerful or terrific. Many of them, at least, are timid little creatures, neither forcing themselves on our notice, nor alarming us when they cross our path. Of unobtrusive habits, some elude all cursory observation. They even flee from our approach, and remain concealed till man withdraws in the evening from his toils, and leaves the field and the woodland to their joyous revels. Hence it is that we have yet much to learn of their habits and instincts. We begin our description of them with

THE HEDGEHOG.†

Ax animal known to the Greeks as Echynos; to the Italians as Riccio; to the Spanish as Erizo; to the Portuguese as Ourizo; to the French as Hérisson; to the Germans as Igel; to the Dutch as Eegelvarken; to the Danes as Pin-suin; to the Ancient Britons as Draenog and Draen y coed; and to the English, in the provinces, as the Urchin, had obviously an extensive range granted to it in former times as well as in our own.

The hedgehog, when full grown, is about nine inches and a half in length. Its upper part is

"Thalala the Destroyer." Book iii.

+ Erinaceus Europeus.

covered with sharp spines. The body is thick, the crown of the head high, the muzzle acute, the ears of a medium size and somewhat rounded, the toes have strong nails, the tail is very short, and in some species there is none. It is very frequently found in England, and resides in small thickets, on the borders of woods and copses, in hedges, and in dry ditches.

This animal, as is well known, has the power of rolling itself up into a ball, in which state it appears to have attracted the prying gaze of a cur, represented in a wintry scene in our engraving on page 184. The cur seems not to know what to make of the strange-looking thing that lies on the snowy ground.

A peculiar muscular expansion beneath the skin enables the hedgehog to inclose itself in its panoply, as in a mantle and hood, the margin of which is closed by means of a circular muscle, the head and limbs being retracted within. While the animal is thus enveloped in its armed skin the spines are stiffly set by the action of the muscular expansion, and radiate from the ball. So powerful is the contraction of the muscles when folded up that the animal might as easily be torn in pieces as pulled open.

So elastic and strong is this covering that a hedgehog can roll down a steep declivity without the slightest injury. Mr. Bell states that he has seen, and that repeatedly, a domesticated hedgehog in his possession run towards the precipitous wall of an area, and, without a moment's pause for preparation, throw itself off, contracting at the same instant into a ball, in which condition it reached

the ground from a height of twelve or fourteen feet. So safely did it fall, that after only a few moments it unfolded itself, and did not creep but run away.

The female breeds early in the summer, having formed a nest with much skill, roofed so as to throw off the rain, while within it is well lined with leaves and moss. The young, from two to four in number, are blind at their birth, are about two inches long, and are perfectly white and naked, though the rudiments of the spines may be perceived. The prickles soon develop themselves, and harden even before the eyes are opened, but it is not till a later period that the young are able to draw down the skin over the muzzle, and fold themselves into a complete ball. The mother is unremitting in her duties to her offspring.

Hedgehogs live in pairs, and are nocturnal in their habits. The creature frequents woods, copses, old gardens, orchards, and thick hedgerows, where it remains rolled up in its retreat during the day; but coming forth on the approach of twilight, and continuing till morning on the alert. Its food consists of insects, eggs, young worms, snails, slugs, frogs, nestlings, and various kinds of vegetables as the roots of grass and plantain, gooseberries, and strawberries when it can gain access to them, and the ripe fruits which fall from the trees in the orchard.

White, in his "Natural History of Selborne," states that the hedgehogs, which abounded in his

garden, ate in a curious manner the roots of the plantain in his grass walks. With their upper mandible, which is much shorter than the lower, they bored under the plant, and so ate off the root upwards, the leaves on the surface remaining untouched.

The hedgehog may be easily domesticated, and even becomes familar, feeding on soaked bread, vegetables, and meat. The Calmuc Tartars keep it in their huts instead of cats, for the purpose of driving away vermin. Some years ago there was one at the Angel Inn, at Felton, in Northumberland, which acted as a turnspit, as well as the dog that used to bear that name. It ran about the house as familiar as any other domestic quadruped, and displayed an obedience not previously observed by inmates and visitors.

The hedgehog has often proved of great service in kitchens, by effectually clearing them of crickets, -cockroaches, beetles, and other insects; and as it keeps quiet in its nest or retreat all day, and only comes forth in chase of its prey at night, it is not merely harmless, but useful.

This animal passes the winter in a state of complete torpidity. To do so, it secures a retreat in banks, under the hollow roots of trees, in holes and other sheltered and convenient places. Here it constructs a sort of nest or bed of grasses, dried leaves, and moss, with which it covers itself thickly and closely. When discovered in these circumstances, it resembles a ball of herbage, which it seems to have attached to its spines by repeatedly rolling round amidst a quantity of materials of this kind, which it had previously collected.

The Romans made use of the spiny skin of the hedgehog in the hackling of hemp, a practice in which they were followed by the people of France. Formerly it was used, in some parts of England, as a brush for clothes. The farmers on the Continent sometimes fix it on the muzzle of a calf that they wish to wean.

A singular notion has prevailed in reference to the hedgehog. They have been supposed capable of draining dry the udders of cows during the night, to the surprise of the dairymaid and the wrath of her employer. But the charge has no better foundation than that of Pliny, which is exaggerated by Sperling, who asserts that it ascends trees and knocks off the apples and pears, to which story Elian adds figs, and that the depredator then throwing itself down upon them, so that the fruit may stick to his spines, gaily trots off with its prize! Albertus Magnus, a very ancient writer, affirms that the right eye of a hedgehog fried in oil, kept in a brass vessel, and used as an ointment to the eyes, will enable a person to see by night as well as day! Yet of such absurd applications as these did a great part of the medical art in former times consist.

Only a short time ago, a gipsy witness at a trial, when eating an Urchin was mentioned to the disgust of many, intimated, by uncouth words, and by strange and grotesque grimaces, that he ranked it among the delicacies of his roaming life. Others, among whom are many of our continental neighbours, affirm that the flesh is tender.

A most interesting fact in the natural history of this creature was announced by M. Lenz, and afterwards confirmed by Dr. Buckland. This is, that the most violent animal poisons have no effect upon it; a fact which renders it of peculiar value in forests, where it appears to destroy a great number of noxious reptiles.

M. Lenz says, that he had in his house a female hedgehog, which he kept in a large box, and which soon became very mild and familiar. He often put into the box some adders, which it attacked with avidity, seizing them indifferently by the head, the body, or the tail; and he states, that it did not appear alarmed or embarrassed, when they coiled themselves around its body.

When the

On one occasion M. Lenz witnessed a fight between a hedgehog and a viper. hedgehog came near and smelled the snake (for with these animals the sense of sight is obtuse), she seized it by the head, and held it fast between her teeth, but without appearing to do it rauch harm, for having disengaged its head, it assumed a furious and menacing attitude, and hissing vehemently inflicted several severe bites on the hedgehog. The little animal did not, however, recoil from the bites of the viper, nor, indeed, seem to care much about them. At last, when the reptile was fatigued by its efforts, she again seized it by the head, which she ground between her teeth, compressing the fangs and glands of poison, and then devouring every part of the body.

M. Lenz states that battles of this kind often occurred in the presence of many persons, and sometimes the hedgehog has received eight or ten wounds on the ears, the snout, and even on the

tongue, without appearing to experience any of the ordinary symptoms produced by the venom of the viper. Neither herself nor the young which she was then suckling seemed to suffer from it.

This observation agrees with that of Pallas, who assures us that the hedgehog can eat about a hundred cantharides, without experiencing any of the effects which this insect, taken inwardly, produces on men, dogs, and cats. A German physician, who made the hedgehog a particular object of study, gave it a strong dose of prussic acid, of arsenic, of opium, and of corrosive sublimate, none of which did it any harm.

Closely allied to the genus Erinaceus is the genus Centetes, which comprehends certain hedgehoglike animals, confined, so far as we know, to the Mauritius and Madagascar. They are covered with spines, but these are feebler than those of the hedgehog; nor do these animals roll themselves up so completely in a ball as the hedgehog. They differ, moreover, in their dentition, having forty teeth.

The muzzle is long and pointed; there are five toes on each foot, separated and armed with crooked claws; the tail is wanting. Although inhabiting a warm region, they are said to pass the three warmest months of the year in a state of torpidity. This, it must be owned, is a singular circumstance, and is the only one on recors of an animal hybernating, if we may use the expression, in the height of summer. In other respects they feed like the European hedgehog, and are nocturnal animals.

The singularity of the circumstance vanishes when we find that the period in which the Tenrec becomes dormant is not only the warm season but the dry season, and the apparent anomaly affords one instance out of a multitude of the harmony of adaptation that prevails throughout Nature. A suspension of the active powers of life becomes absolutely necessary to insect-eating quadrupeds, because there must be certain seasons when they can find no food. Our usual term for the act of retiring, in order to give