36 NATURAL HISTORY 



part it belonged. It was so compact and well filled, that it 

 would roll across the table without being discomposed, though 

 it contained eight little mice that were naked and blind. As 

 this nest was perfectly full, how could the dam come at her 

 litter respectively so as to administer a teat to each? perhaps 

 she opens different places for that purpose, adjusting them 

 again when the business is over : but she could not possibly 

 be contained herself in the ball with her young, which more- 

 over would be daily increasing in bulk. This wonderful pro- 

 creant cradle, and elegant instance of the efforts of instinct, 

 was found in a wheat-field, suspended in the head of a 

 thistle*. 



A gentleman, curious in birds, wrote me word that his ser- 



* [The history of this interesting little animal, the smallest of our 

 British mammals, excepting the lesser shrew (Sorex pygmceus), has been 

 fully developed since White's time by the observations of many naturalists. 

 Although our author was the first to make public the discovery of this 

 species, it had been known to Montagu, who gives the following account 

 of his acquaintance with it, in the ' Linnean Transactions/ vol. vii. p. 

 214 : " This elegant little species of mouse ... is by no means confined 

 to Hampshire, for we well remember it was common in the more cham- 

 paign parts of Wiltshire in our younger days, and previous to the discovery 

 of it by Mr. White 5 and we have since those juvenile days found it in 

 other parts of the same county," &c. It is certainly not a universally dis- 

 tributed species, although found in many parts of England, in some places 

 in Scotland, and, though rarely, in Ireland. Its food commonly consists 

 of grain and other seeds ; but it also eagerly takes insects, as is shown in 

 an amusing account by JBingley, in his ' Animal Biography/ who, de- 

 scribing the habits of one kept in confinement, says: " One evening, as I 

 was sitting at my writing-desk, and the animal was playing about in the 

 open part of its cage, a large blue fly happened to buzz against the wires. 

 The little creature, although at twice or thrice the distance of her own 

 length from it, sprang along the wires with the greatest agility, and 

 would certainly have seized it, had the space between the wires been 

 sufficiently wide to have permitted her teeth to reach it. I caught the 

 fly, and made it buzz in my fingers against the wires. The mouse, though 

 usually shy and timid, immediately came out of her hiding-place, and 

 running to the spot, seized and devoured it." The description of the nest 

 by Dr. Gloger, in the ' Transactions of the German Academy ' (Nov. Act. 

 Acad. L.-C. Nat.-Our. xiv. part i.), supplements that of White in a very 

 interesting manner, and will be found in Bennett's edition of this work, 

 and in the second edition of the l British Quadrupeds.' T. B.] 



