MUSICAL MICE. 325 



paid the penalty of its temerity by being captured. About a month 

 after, this prodigy was intrusted to the custody of the writer. Of 

 course, it came introduced as a " singing house-mouse." What was 

 our astonishment at recognizing, in the little stranger, a true Hesper- 

 omys, and no house-mouse at all ! It was one of the wood-mice, and 

 among the smallest of the species. It is a female, and fully grown, 

 yet not so large as a domestic mouse. Every pains was taken to se- 

 cure the comfort and well-being of my little guest. 



And what an ample reward I reaped ! For a considerable time she 

 carolled almost incessantly, except when she slept. Day and night she 

 rollicked in tiny song, her best performances being usually at night. 

 To me it was often a strange delight, when, having wrought into the 

 late hours, and the weary brain had become so needful and yet so re- 

 pellant of sleep, I lay clown, and gave myself up to listening to this 

 wee songster, whose little cage I had set on a chair by my bedside. 

 To be sure, it was a low, very low, sweet voice. But there was, with a 

 singular weirdness, something so sweetly merry, that I would listen on, 

 and on, until I would fall asleep in the lullaby of my wingless and 

 quadrupedal bob-o'-link. The cage had a revolving cylinder or wheel, 

 such as tame squirrels have. In this it would run for many minutes at a 

 time, singing at its utmost strength. This revolving cage, although 

 ample as regards room, was not over three and a half inches long, and 

 two and a half inches wide. Although I have now been entertained 

 by these pretty little melodies for a year, yet I would not dare rede- 

 scribe them. In the American Naturalist, for December, 1871, the 

 music is given with that elaboration which was possible under impres- 

 sions so novel and delightful. She had two especially notable per- 

 formances. I called these roles one the wheel-song, because it was 

 usually sung while in the revolving cylinder, and the other the grand 

 role. A remarkable fact in the latter is the scope of the little creature's 

 musical powers. Her soft, clear voice falls an octave with all the pre- 

 cision possible ; then, at its wind-up, it rises again into a very quick 

 trill on C sharp and D. 



I must quote from the above a paragi-aph entire. Let me simply 

 premise that in our household this little creature goes by the pet name 

 "Hespie." 



" Though it be at the risk of taxing belief, yet I must in duty record one of 

 Hespie's most remarkable performances. She was gambolling in the large com- 

 partment of ber cage, in intense animal enjoyment. She had just woke from a 

 long sleep, and had eaten of some favorite food, when she burst into a fulness 

 of song very rich in its variety. While running and jumping, she carolled off, 

 what I have called her grand role ; then, sitting, she went over it again, ringing 

 out the strangest diversity of changes, by an almost whimsical transposition of 

 the bars of the melody ; then, without, for even an instant, stopping the music, 

 she leaped into the wheel, sent it revolving at its highest speed, and, while thus 

 running in the wheel, she went through the wheel-song in exquisite style, giving 



