200 MAMMALIA. 



took the little mouse into my hand. It exhibited no motion or 

 sign of life. Its eyes and mouth were shut tight, and its little fore 

 feet or hands were shut and placed close together. Everything 

 indicated that the mouse was perfectly dead, excepting the fact 

 that it was not as rigid as perhaps a dead mouse would be in the 

 winter. I tied the mouse and nest in my handkerchief and carried 

 them to Vincennes. Arriving at Dr. Patton's office I untied my 

 treasures, and took out the mouse and held it for some time in my 

 hand ; it still exhibited no sign of life ; but at length I thought I 

 saw a very slight movement in one of the hind legs. Presently 

 there was a very slight movement of the head, yet so feeble that 

 one could hardly be sure it was real. Then there came to be some 

 evidence of breathing, and a slight pressure of my fingers upon 

 the tail near the body was followed by an immediate but feeble 

 movement of one of the hind legs. At length there was unmis- 

 takable evidence that the animal was breathing, but the breathing 

 was a labored action, and seemingly performed with great diffi- 

 culty. As the mouse became warmer the signs of life became more 

 and more marked ; and in the course of the same afternoon on 

 which I brought it into the warm room it became perfectly active, 

 and was as ready to jump about as any other member of its 

 species. 



" I put this mouse into a little tin box with holes in the cover, 

 and took him with me in my journeyings, taking care to put in the 

 box a portion of an ear of corn and pieces of paper. It ate the 

 corn by gnawing from the outside of the kernel, and it gnawed the 

 paper into bits with which it made a nest. On the fourth day 

 after its capture I gave it water which it seemed to relish. On the 

 23d of January, I took it with me to Elgin, Illinois, nearly three 

 hundred miles farther north than the region where I found the 

 specimen. The weather was intensely cold. Taking the mouse 

 from the box, I placed it on a newspaper on a table, and covered 

 it with a large glass bell, lifting the edge of the glass so as to admit 



