CHAPTER IX. 



WILD-MICE. 



I HAVE often felt sore because I could never find a 

 shrew in any of my rambles. I have knocked over hun- 

 dreds of mice, in hopes of finding one with a pointed 

 snout and a slender tail, but all to no purpose. There 

 are shrews in my meadows, I am confident. Indeed, 

 others have found them ; but in twenty years' search I 

 have never seen one. But if not a shrew, I have seen 

 mice in abundance mice big and fat; mice lean and 

 small, and middle-sized mice; mice that were ill-tem- 

 pered and would bite ; others that were gentle, and took 

 pleasure in nestling in the hollow of your hand. Some- 

 times I would fill my pockets with them, or tie up a 

 dozen in my handkerchief, and then, reaching home, 

 would let them loose in a box, and sit down gravely to 

 " determine the species." I would have De Kay's tomes 

 before me, and Coues's and Allen's bulky quarto on " Ro- 

 dentia," and Jordan's " Manual," and the mice, and I 

 would work by the hour, and pinch their tails and squint 

 at their teeth and twist their toes, but it mattered not, all 

 my labor and all my specimens simmered down to one 

 poor meadow-mouse. I have tried to twist their hair 

 and curl their whiskers, and lengthen their ears by a sly 

 pull with the tweezers, but it was of no avail there was 

 only the one species, and I could not make a second, al- 

 though I have tried very hard and very often. 



