The adult male Hedgehog is about nine and a quarter inches in measurement of head and body, and the tail is a little over an inch; the female is less than the male by about three-quarters of an inch. In relation to its entire bulk—it weighs one and a half pounds—the neck and body are said to be shorter than in any other British mammal. The eyes are bright and prominent. The legs are so short that the body but little more than clears the ground in walking. Both hand and foot has five clawed toes, and five pads on the sole.
The sharply pointed spines are about three-quarters of an inch in length. They are quite hard, and have from twenty-two to twenty-four longitudinal grooves. They have a hemispherical base above which is a narrow neck sharply bent, so that the spine is almost at right angles with the base.
When attacked the Hedgehog has the skunk-like habit of emitting a highly objectionable odour in order to disgust its assailant.
We have never tried Hedgehog-meat as food, but several well-known men have testified to its excellence when cooked gipsy-fashion—in a crust of clay.
The dentition of the Hedgehog is i 3/2, c 1/1, pm 3/2, m 3/3 = 36.
With the Hedgehog we make our acquaintance with the order Insectivora, which is represented in Britain by five species only: the others being the Mole and three Shrews. In many respects they are similar to the Rodentia, but the incisor teeth have not the chisel-shape of the latter, and the molar teeth instead of having grinding crowns have them developed into pointed eminences more suited for piercing the chitinous armour of beetles, etc. The skeleton is furnished with clavicles or collar-bones. There are five toes on each of the feet, furnished with claws, and the animal walks on its soles. Our native species represent three distinct families: Erinacidæ (Hedgehog), Talpidæ (Mole), and Soricidæ (Shrews).
Mole (Talpa europæa, Linn.).
However slight may be their personal acquaintance with the Mole himself, his engineering work is only too evident to every possessor of a garden. He may, perchance, live in a neighbour's land, but from time to time we shall find some morning that he has driven a tunnel right across the lawn or the tennis-court, marring its hitherto fair surface with an ugly ridge and at intervals a little heap of raw earth. If we are sufficiently self-controlled to dissemble our inward rage, we may get some countervailing good out of the calamity. If we bring a garden chair and sit quietly within range of the newest heap, our quiet watching may be rewarded by a sight of the clever little engineer, and we may be restrained from throwing stones at him by the thought that he is seeking to reduce the number of those worm-casts on the lawn that have always annoyed us so.
If the tunnelling work is not yet completed, we shall see a heaving of the fresh heap of soil, and after a short interval the sharp, black snout of the Mole will be pushed up from the centre to sniff the air and ascertain if it is safe for him to make a fuller appearance. Satisfied that it is so, he exhibits his shoulders and the broad shovel-shaped hands with which he has accomplished all this navigator's work. Now he is right out, even to his ridiculous little tail, and so to speak swimming over the turf—for he cannot walk on his forefeet, the hands being set sideways for his shovelling work.