“The cheek-pouches,” said Emile, “where the bat puts its game to soak, and the nose that scents the coming storm, seemed to me the most curious things about the animal.” “And I,” said Louis, “shall never forget how many enemies bats deliver us from.” “Now you understand,” Uncle Paul rejoined, “or at least I hope you are beginning to understand, that bats, being so useful to us in destroying a multitude of ravaging insects, and noteworthy for their singular structure, should not inspire us with an unjustifiable repugnance and still less with a stupid rage to exterminate them. Let us leave in peace these poor creatures that so valiantly earn their living by protecting our crops. Do not let us harm them under the foolish pretext that they are ugly, for their supposed ugliness is in reality an admirable adaptation of bodily structure to the creature’s mode of life.” CHAPTER VII THE HEDGEHOG In his walled garden Uncle Paul allowed a couple of hedgehogs, which he had brought from the neighboring hills, to wander at large. One evening the children noticed them poking about in a lettuce patch. “Why,” asked Emile, “has Uncle Paul put those animals in the garden and told us to leave them alone if we happened to come across them?” “No doubt to make war on harmful insects,” answered Louis. “Stop, look there! One of them is turning up the earth with its little black snout. Ssh! Let’s keep still and see what it’s after.” The children crouched down behind a row of peas so as not to be seen. The hedgehog, now scratching with its paws, now rummaging with the tip of its snout, which resembles that of a pig, finally unearthed a big, fat white larva which had probably been clinging to the root of a lettuce plant. The children ran to look at the captured game. The hedgehog, thus taken by surprise, hastened to roll itself up into a ball bristling with spines. In the disinterred worm Jules easily recognized a June-bug larva, one of that ravenous and destructive race that Uncle Paul had already told them about. [1] In the evening, when they were all gathered together, the hedgehog naturally became the subject of conversation. “Several years ago,” said Uncle Paul, “as I was returning home one evening at a late hour, I chanced upon two hedgehogs coming out from a pile of stones. I tied them up in my handkerchief so as to bring them home and let them loose in my garden. Ever since then they have never failed to render me certain services that you can appreciate by examining the jaws in this picture.” “Pointed teeth like those,” Jules remarked, “were never made for browsing grass. The hedgehog must feed on prey. Its teeth are just right for crunching June-bug worms such as I saw dug up in the garden this morning.”