310 COMMON BEASTS OF AN INDIAN GARDEN 



shut up in confined quarters in their company. It 

 is not easy to forget the feeling of disgust attending 

 the sudden fall of a rat from the ceiling into one's 

 face as one lies in bed, or the horror of realising that 

 one or more rats are in one's berth in a small cabin. 



Both of the common rats, but especially the 

 brown ones, are a constant source of trouble and loss 

 in the Zoological Garden at Alipur. They seem to 

 find it a perfect paradise, and are for ever undermining 

 the basements of the buildings, purloining grain and 

 other articles of food, not to speak of occasionally 

 playing havoc among eggs, and young or even 

 mature birds. 



Common house-mice, Mm musculus, abound in 

 Bengal, and it is only necessary to set up an aviary 

 in a verandah, or to keep a few caged birds in the 

 rooms of a house, in order to be aware of the fact. 

 They really are much more troublesome than rats 

 from their great desire to live indoors and from the 

 ravages that they commit among books and papers 

 whilst engaged in building their nests. It is quite a 

 common experience, on opening a drawer in a writing- 

 table, to find that bundles of valuable papers have 

 been torn up into strips and then woven into hollow 

 rounded masses containing litters of unpleasant, pink, 

 gelatinous young mice, or to discover that some 

 treasured volume has been ruthlessly disfigured by 

 having its edges and corners mangled. For some 

 years I kept large numbers of birds in my house, and 



