Hedge, s. A fence made round grounds with prickly bushes.
Hedge, v. To enclose with a hedge; to encircle; to shut up within an enclosure. In betting, hedging means to bet upon and against the same event.
Hedgehog, s. An animal set with prickles like thorns in a hedge.
Hedgehogs abound in my gardens and fields. The manner in which they eat the roots of the plantain in my grass walk is very curious: with their upper mandible, which is much longer than their lower, they bore under the plant, and so eat the root off upwards, leaving the tuft of leaves untouched. In this respect they are serviceable, as they destroy a very troublesome weed; but they deface the walks in some measure by digging little round holes. It appears, by the dung that they drop upon the turf, that beetles are no inconsiderable part of their food. In June last I procured a litter of four or five young hedgehogs, which appeared to be about five or six days old; they, I find, like puppies, are born blind, and could not see when they came to my hands. No doubt their spines are soft and flexible at the time of their birth, or else the poor dam would have but a bad time of it in the critical moment of parturition: but it is plain that they soon harden; for these little pigs had such stiff prickles on their backs and sides as would easily have fetched blood, had they not been handled with caution. Their spines are quite white at this age; and they have little hanging ears, which I do not remember to be discernible in the old ones. They can, in part, at this age draw their skin down over their faces; but are not able to contract themselves into a ball, as they do, for the sake of defence, when full grown. The reason, I suppose, is, because the curious muscle that enables the creature to roll itself up into a ball has not then arrived at its full tone and firmness. Hedgehogs make a deep and warm hybernaculum with leaves and moss, in which they conceal themselves for the winter: but I never could find that they stored in any winter provision, as some quadrupeds certainly do.
Jesse says, “I had also a tame hedge-hog, which nestled before the fire, on the stomach of an old lazy terrier dog, who was much attached to it, and the best understanding existed between them.”
Sagacity of the Hedgehog.—During the summer of 1818, as Mr. Lane, gamekeeper to the Earl of Galloway, was passing by the wood of Glascaden, near Garlieston, in Scotland, he fell in with a hedgehog, crossing the road at a small distance before him, carrying on its back six pheasant’s eggs, which upon examination he found it had pilfered from a pheasant’s nest hard by. The ingenuity of the creature was very conspicuous, as several of the remaining eggs were holed, which must have been done by it, when in the act of rolling itself over the nest, in order to make as many adhere to its prickles as possible. After watching the motions of the urchin for a short time longer, Mr. Lane saw it deliberately crawl into a furze bush, where its nest was, and where the shells of several eggs were strewed around, which had at some former period been conveyed thither in the same manner.—White’s Selborne—Jesse.
Hedgerow, s. The series of trees or bushes planted for enclosures.