white and
as tender as a chicken (not quite equal to porcupine, I should say);
they cook them by rolling them in clay, and baking them till the clay
is dry; when the ball is broken open the prickles come off with the
crust.

[Figure: Hedgehog.]

Hedgehogs have had several popular fallacies concerning them. They
were supposed to suck cows dry during the night and to be proof
against poisons. Mr. Frank Buckland tried prussic acid on one with
fatal results, but he says the bite of a viper seemed to have no effect.
Pallas, I know, has remarked that hedgehogs will eat hundreds of
cantharides beetles with impunity, whereas one or two will cause
extreme agony to a cat or dog. The female goes with young about seven
weeks, and she has from three to eight in number. The little ones
when born have soft spines--which, however, soon harden--are blind,
and, with the exception of the rudimentary prickles, quite naked.
They are white at birth, but in about a month acquire the colour of
the mother.

NO. 150. ERINACEUS COLLARIS.
_The Collared Hedgehog_ (_Jerdon's No. 85_).

HABITAT.--Northern India and Afghanistan. Dallas says from Madras
to Candahar; but Jerdon calls it the North Indian hedgehog, and
assigns to it the North-west, Punjab, and Sind, giving Southern India
to the next species.

DESCRIPTION.--Spines irregularly interwoven, ringed with white and
black, with yellowish tips, or simply white and black, or black with
a white ring in the middle; ears large; chin white; belly and legs
pale brown.

SIZE.--Head and body, 8 to 9 inches; tail, 7/12 inch.

I have found this species in the Punjab near Lahore. One evening,
whilst walking in the dusk, a small animal, which I took to be a rat,
ran suddenly between my legs. Now I confess to an antipathy to rats,
and, though I would not willingly hurt any animal, I could not resist
an impulsive kick, which sent my supposed rat high in the air. I felt
a qualm of conscience immediately afterwards, and ran to pick up my
victim, and was sorry to find I had perpetrated such an assault on
an unoffending little hedgehog, which was however only stunned, and
was carried off by me to the Zoological Gardens. Captain Hutton
writes of them that they feed on beetles, lizards, and snails; "when
touched they have the habit of suddenly jerking up the back with some
force so as to prick the fingers or mouth of the assailant, and at
the same time emitting a blowing sound, not unlike the noise prod