68 ANIMALS OF NORTH AMERICA. 



bad as the scoundrels of a higher order of beings, who 

 endowed with the superior powers of intelligence, still 

 act as if they possessed all the villainous qualities of the rat 

 without being able to offer a similar apology for their con- 

 duct. He is one of the most impudent, troublesome, 

 mischievous, wicked wretches that ever infested the 

 habitations of man. When he gains access to a library, he 

 does not hesitate to translate and appropriate to his own use 

 the works of the most learned authors, and is not so readily 

 detected as some of his brother pirates of the human kind, 

 since he does not carry off his prize entire, but cuts it into 

 pieces, before conveying it into his den." The only benefit 

 he affords to man is from his skin ; large quantities being 

 exported from California (where they are an article of traffic 

 among the Chinese population), in a salted state to France ; 

 whence after undergoing certain operations and manipulations 

 there, these loathsome peltries emerge again into the world in 

 the shape of kid gloves ! the finest so called kid being made 

 from rat skin. The elegant white leather in druggists' cases 

 which is so elaborately tied over scent bottles, is also the skin 

 of our detested friend. 



THE BLACK RAT (M. Rattus) has disappeared so entirely 

 before the previous species as to be almost extinct ; the common 

 mouse (Mus Musculus'), likewise an importation, being 

 probably introduced in bales of merchandise, is abundant every 

 where; it is very prolific, producing several litters in the 

 year ; and we have the authority of Aristotle two thousand 

 years ago, that from a pregnant female enclosed in a chest 

 of grain, 120 individuals were created in a few months. 



THE POUCHED RAT (Pseudostoma bursarius) is found in 

 Florida and the extreme South, and is but little known. 



THE JUMPING MOUSE ( G-erbalis Canadensii) is found from 

 Canada to Pennsylvania. This timid and active little crea- 

 ture is abundantly met with in meadows and grain fields, and 

 when not in motion might easily be mistaken for the common 



