BRITISH MAMMALS 99 



much pleasure in the garden. At last we 

 cut off so much of the garden as we could 

 surround with wire netting and left the rest 

 to take its chance. No sooner had we done 

 this than, for what reason I cannot tell, the 

 rabbits disappeared completely, and for two. 

 or three years we hardly ever saw one on our 

 own ground, though they seemed to be as 

 plentiful as usual elsewhere. 



We have sometimes caught long-tailed 

 field-mice that were eating the peas, and the 

 cats seemed to find voles and shrews pretty 

 often. 



I must confess to rather a weakness for 

 common mice ; they are pretty to look at and 

 amusing in their ways. To give an instance 

 of their ingenuity and enterprise, I remember 

 some time in the summer of 1899, when we 

 used to have a basin of sugar left in our room 

 at night, a certain mouse appeared to think 

 that it was placed there for his own special 

 benefit, at any rate he was accustomed to help 

 himself very freely to it. We could hear 

 him working away to get a lump over the side 

 of the basin, then rolling it along to the edge 

 of the table and letting it fall to the floor, 

 along which he would again roll it to a hole 

 under the skirting-board. Sometimes he 

 would take in this way as many as three or 

 four lumps of sugar in one night. Besides 

 the sugar there was often bread and butter 

 left in the room between two plates, and one 



