MOUSE.] NATURAL HISTORY. 207 



or else hang one in the shop, as a thing by a secret 

 antipathy that Moths cannot endure. Garments wrapped 

 up in a lion's skin will never have any moths. 



Mouffety "Theatre of Insects," p. noo. 



Mouse. 



MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, v. I, 394. 



THE Mouse is a little beast, and he breedeth and is 

 gendered of humours of the earth. Also the liver of this 

 beast waxeth in the full of the moon, like as a certain fish 

 of the sea increaseth then, and waneth again in the waning 

 of the moon. And the Mouse drinketh not, and if he 

 drinketh, he dieth ; and is a gluttonous beast, and is there- 

 fore beguiled with a little meat when he smelleth it, and 

 will taste thereof. His urine stinketh and is contagious ; 

 and his biting is venomous, and also his tail is venomous 

 accounted. In harvest the male and female gather corn, and 

 charge either other upon the womb, and the male draweth 

 the female so charged by the tail to her den, and dis- 

 chargeth her, and layeth up that stuff in a place in the 

 den, and thus they go again to travail, and gather ears of 

 corn, and the male layeth himself on his own back, and his 

 female chargeth him, and taketh his tail in her mouth, and 

 draweth him so home to the den. And though mice be 

 full grievous and noyful beasts, yet they be in many things 

 good and profitable in medicine. Mice dirt bruised with 

 vinegar keepeth and saveth the head from falling of hair. 

 His new skin laid all about the heel, healeth and saveth 

 kibes and wounds therefro. 



Bartholomew (Bertbelet), bk. xviii. 73. 



PUT one or more quick [i.e., live] Mice in a long or 

 deep earthen pot, and set the same unto a fire made of ash- 

 wood ; and when the pot begins to wax hot, the Mice 

 therein will chirp or make a noise ; whereat all the mice 

 that are nigh them will run towards them, and so will leap 

 into the fire, as though they should come to help their 

 poor imprisoned friends and neighbours. The cause whereof 

 ~ lizaldus ascribes to the smoke of the ash-wood. 



Lupton, "Notable Things," bk. x. 93. 



