Nevertheless, with experienced eyes, I explore amid the bare alders and
the huckleberry-bushes and the withered sedge, and in the crevices
of the rocks, which are full of leaves, and pry under the fallen and
decaying ferns, which, with apple and alder leaves, thickly strew the
ground. For I know that they lie concealed, fallen into hollows long
since and covered up by the leaves of the tree itself,--a proper kind of
packing. From these lurking-places, anywhere within the circumference of
the tree, I draw forth the fruit, all wet and glossy, maybe nibbled by
rabbits and hollowed out by crickets and perhaps with a leaf or two
cemented to it, (as Curzon an old manuscript from a monastery's mouldy
cellar,) but still with a rich bloom on it, and at least as ripe and
well kept, if not better than those in barrels, more crisp and lively
than they. If these resources fail to yield anything, I have learned to
look between the bases of the suckers which spring thickly from some
horizontal limb, for now and then one lodges there, or in the very midst
of an alder-clump, where they are covered by leaves, safe from cows
which may have smelled them out. If I am sharp-set, for I do not refuse
the Blue-Pearmain, I fill my pockets on each side; and as I retrace my
steps in the frosty eve, being perhaps four or five miles from home, I
eat one first from this side, and then from that, to keep my balance.

I learn from Topsell's Gesner, whose authority appears to be Albertus,
that the following is the way in which the hedgehog collects and carries
home his apples. He says,--"His meat is apples, worms, or grapes: when
he findeth apples or grapes on the earth, he rolleth himself upon them,
until he have filled all his prickles, and then carrieth them home to
his den, never bearing above one in his mouth; and if it fortune that
one of them fall off by the way, he likewise shaketh off all the
residue, and walloweth upon them afresh, until they be all settled upon
his back again. So, forth he goeth, making a noise like a cart-wheel;