OF HARTING. 243 



animal, they surround the body with a tolerably thick 

 coating of clay or loam, and, without further prepa- 

 ration, place it in a fire kindled for the purpose, which 

 is kept up until the experienced " artiste " knows that 

 the delicious morsel is sufficiently baked. When the 

 covering is removed, with the skin and quills adhering 

 to it, nothing more is required by those who are about 

 to partake of the dainty, than that " digestion wait on 

 appetite and health on both." Fragments of these 

 casts have been more than once found on Bramstead 

 Heath, near Kill Devil Copse, a favourite camping 

 ground of the gipsies in our younger days, and have 

 puzzled us not a little. 



The brown Rat (Mus decumanus} is too well known 

 to need more than a passing notice. It is a very 

 daring, very wary, very prolific animal, and wherever 

 there is an accumulation of animal or vegetable offal, 

 it is undeniably a most useful scavenger, fully entitled 

 to our thanks. It cannot be denied, however, that it 

 is very far from being a general favourite, our allusion 

 to it, therefore, will be limited to the simple assertion 

 that in our larders, our hen roosts, our barns, and our 

 hedge banks, it is much more " free than welcome." 



The common Mouse (Mus muscuhis) is equally 

 numerous with the last species, and although it is a 

 much more gentle animal, its depredations in grana- 

 ries, barns, and corn ricks, are sometimes very great. 

 Everyone has seen the pretty Albino variety or White 

 Mouse, exhibited in numbers by wandering Savoyards 

 and intelligent organ grinders, and many persons have 

 kept white mice as pets, but it has fallen to the lot of 

 few to meet with an individual of the species, of any 

 colour, addicted to musical exercises ; yet we learn 

 from good authority, that on one occasion a whole 

 family of young mice vied with each other in their 

 attempts to imitate the song of a canary, and that one 

 of the number, whose organ of melody was probably 

 more fully developed than those of its companions, 

 eventually succeeded tolerably well ! 



R 2 



