66 RAMBLES ABOUT HOME. 



filled with fine hay and a few very small feathers. There 

 were no young mice, however. The three exits were of 

 sufficient size to admit of the rapid passage of a mouse, say 

 about one and a half inches in diameter. Although the 

 wood was very rotten and yielded to the gentlest touch, 

 yet the sides of these tunnels were beautifully intact and 

 as smooth as a carefully bored hole in hard wood. 

 While much interested in the fact that two very distinct 

 species of mice should occupy quarters in such close prox- 

 imity the two nests being less than a foot apart I was 

 more struck with the fact that there should be also two 

 colonies of ants in the same log. One colony of large 

 black ants, nearly half an inch long, had an extensive se- 

 ries of tunnels, chambers, and anterooms built in one end 

 of the log, and in some of the apartments were numbers 

 of large white larvae. The mice, both meadow and 

 white-footed, were near at hand, all day and every night, 

 and notwithstanding the tempting morsels in the shape 

 of the larvae I have mentioned, the mice did not appear 

 to have disturbed the ants at all. On the other hand, 

 the legions of black ants at one end of the log might read- 

 ily have taken possession of the nests of the mice, yet I 

 did not see a trace of an ant in either nest. Then, at 

 the other end of the log, six feet away, were these mi- 

 nute red ants by millions. These might also have proved 

 a formidable foe to the mice, yet they, too, seemed will- 

 ing to remain within bounds, and not a sign of them 

 was to be found in the nest of either species of mouse. 



Some years ago a freshet floated a few half-rotted 

 logs into a stretch of low, swampy meadow, near my 

 house, and in these logs colonies of meadow-mice took 

 up their abodes. They were regularly bored and tun- 

 neled, just as so much firm earth might have been. In 



