Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/191

Rh readers of 'The Zoologist' may have experimentalized, and can enlighten us.

As an article of food, the Hedgehog, when properly dressed, is said to be very good eating, tasling something like a rabbit. The old belief in cows being suckled by Hedgehogs is now pretty well exploded, even among the most ignorant. In some out-of-the-way places, where it is difficult to get properly constructed muzzles for weaning calves, I have heard of the skin of an Hedgehog being used to answer the same purpose by tying it round the nose-band of the calf.

Again:—

In King Richard III.. Act i., Scene 2, the word Hedgehog is used as an epithet.

Shakspeare appears to have been well versed in the vernacular names of our indigenous wild animals; for, besides the usual name of Hedge-hog, the animal is locally called Hedge-pig and Urchin, with both of which names Shakspeare was familiar, as the following quotations will show: —