182 ANIMALS OF THE 



ricks that are much infested with rats. They 

 generally choose the south-west side of the rick, 

 from whence most rain is expected ; and from 

 thence they often, of an evening, venture forth to 

 drink the little drops either of rain or dew that 

 hang at the extremities of the straw.* Aristotle 

 gives us an idea of their prodigious fecundity by 

 assuring us, that having put a mouse with young 

 into a vessel of corn, in some time after he found 

 a hundred and twenty mice, all sprung from one 

 original. The early growth of this animal im- 

 plies also the short duration of its life, which sel- 

 dom lasts above two or three years. This species 

 is very much diffused, being found in almost all 

 parts of the ancient continent, and having been 

 exported to the new.t They are animals that, 

 while they fear human society, closely attend it, 

 and, although enemies to man, are never found 

 but near those places where he has fixed his habi- 

 tation. Numberless ways have been found for 

 destroying them ; and Gesner has minutely des- 

 cribed the variety of traps by which they are 

 taken. Our Society for the Encouragement of 

 Arts and Manufactures proposed a reward for the 

 most ingenious contrivance for that purpose ; and 

 I observed almost every candidate passing off des- 

 criptions as inventions of his own. I thought it 

 was cruel to detect the plagiarism, or frustrate 

 the humble ambition of those who would be 

 thought the inventors of a mouse-trap. 



Buffon, vol. xv. p. 147. 



j- Lisle's Husbandry, vol. ii. p. 391. 



