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SOme reckon this among the Hedge∣hogs, as Pliny, &c. The Greeks call it Ystrix, from Ys, and Thrix no doubt; some think it to be the African mouse in Plautus. Isidore writes it without an aspira∣tion, and derives it from the noise he makes, and rustling in shaking his bristles. Claudian describes him to be long snowted, like a Hog,
his bristles like horns stif, his eyes fiery red; under his rough back are seen the prints of a small whelp. But Agricola makes him to be Hare-mouthed, with four teeth, two above, two beneath, eared like a man, footed afore like a Badger, behind like a Beare; his bristles, or prickles on his back, and sides partly white, partly black, sometimes two palmes long, which he can make to start up as a Pea-cock his traine. They are common in Ethiopia, and are in all Africa, and India to be found; in Ita∣ly, and France now, and then, but seldome, also in Galicia, as the pilgrims of Compostella testify, who weare their prickly quills in their caps. They lurke in groves among the bushes. They live on apples, turneps, peares, parsnips and crumbled bread, they drinke water, but if mixt with wine, most greedily. They can dart their quills at their enemy, and aime them like arrows; whence, it may be, the Archers art came. By night, they feed most, in winter they lurk in their holes. They carry their young as many dayes as the Beare.
Gluttony hath not spared it neither, some have eaten it, and they cry it up for a dainty, you may see how to dresse it in Ambrosine out of Scapius. In Phisick it seemes to conduce to the same maladies as the Hedge-hog doth. Pliny made tooth-picks of the prickles to fasten the teeth. And women use them for bodkins to part their hair. There is small diffe∣rence between them. Some distinguish them into sea, and land Porcupines; but too confi∣dently, no good Authour mentions the sea one. Such a kind of beast Cardan saw at Papia fif∣teen hundred and fifty, as big as a Fox, mouth∣ed like a Hare; the teeth sticking like the squir∣rells, the eyes black, and serpent-like; the hair like a Goats beard, hanging in the neck, the forefeet like the Badgers, the hinder like the Bears, eared like a man, beset with almost an hundred pricklequils, some crooked at top, else fast, but rustling as he went, Goos-tailed, the feathers spiny, the voyce grumbling like a dogs, he hated all dogs, probably it was some mungrill sprung from the Porcupine, and some other beast.
Ambr.
Digit. l. 2. c. 38. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉.
Described.
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Solinus.
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Agric. ••de an••. subter.
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