[Illustration: SYRIAN BEAR, OR DUBB.—_Ursus Isabellinus._]
The mice of Pontus also conceal themselves during the winter; but only the white ones. I wonder how those authors, who have asserted that the sense of taste in these animals is very acute, found out that such is the fact. The Alpine mice (the marmot) which are the same size as badgers, also conceal themselves; but they first carry a store of provisions into their retreat. There is a similar animal also in Egypt, which sits in the same way, upon its haunches, and walks on two feet, using the fore feet as hands.
Hedgehogs also lay up food for the winter; rolling themselves on apples as they lie on the ground, they pierce some with their quills, and then take up another in the mouth, and so carry them into the hollows of trees. These animals also, when they conceal themselves in their holes, afford a sure sign that the wind is about to change from north-east to south. When they perceive the approach of the hunter, they draw in the head and feet, and all the lower part of the body, which is covered by a thin and defenceless down only, and then roll themselves up into the form of a ball, so that there is no way of taking hold of them but by their quills.
[Illustration: HEDGEHOG.—_Erinaceus Europæus._]
They force it to unroll itself, by sprinkling warm water upon it, and then, suspended by one of its hind legs, it is left to die of hunger; for there is no other mode of destroying it, without doing injury to its skin. This animal is not, as many of us imagine, entirely useless to man. If it were not for the quills which it produces, the soft fleece of the sheep would have been given in vain to mankind; for it is by means of its skin, that our woollen cloth is dressed. From the monopoly of this article, great frauds and great profits have resulted; there is no subject on which the senate has more frequently passed decrees, and there is not one of the Emperors, who has not received from the provinces complaints respecting it.
The flesh of the wild boar is much esteemed. Cato the Censor, in his orations, strongly declaimed against the use of the brawn of the wild boar. The animal used to be divided into three portions, the middle part of which was laid by, and is called boar’s chine. Publius Servilius Rullus was the first Roman who served up a whole boar at a banquet; the father of that Rullus, who, in the consulship of Cicero, proposed the Agrarian law. So recent is the introduction of a thing which is now in daily use. The Annalists have taken notice of such a fact as this, clearly as a hint to us to mend our manners; seeing that now-a-days two or three boars are consumed, not at one entertainment, but as forming the first course only.