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.
" ***Like Hedgehogs, which
Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount
Their pricks at my footfall," &c.
Tempest. Act ii., Scene 2.
Again:—
1st Fairy. "You spotted snake, with double tongue,
Thorny Hedgehogs, be not seen;
Newts and blindworms, do no wrong:
Come not near our fairy queen."
Midsummer Night's Dream. Act ii., Scene 3.
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: —
1st Witch. "Thrice the brindled cat hath mew'd."
2nd Witch. "Thrice; and once the Hedge-pig whin'd."
Macbeth. Act iv., Scene 1.
"And when they showed me this abhorred pit,
They told me, here, at dead time of the night,
A thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes,
Ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins,
Would make such fearful and confused cries
As any mortal body, hearing it,
Should straight fall mad, or else die suddenly."
Titus Andronicus. Act ii., Scene 3.
