24 



Mice. — The Potatoe. 



YoL. xn. 



many thousand francs' worth of this precious 

 article. They would no more think of ex- 

 posing it to the depredations of the needy 

 and unprincipled, in the open air, than a sil- 

 versmith with us, would pile up his wares 

 in a yard; why, while the marchand de hois 

 was looking' away, some scoundrel might fill 

 his pockets and be off. For two francs I 

 got twenty-three sticks, short sticks, rather 

 small ; and for two sous each I purchased 

 two bundles of kindlings in fagots. It is, I 

 believe, about a franc and a half for fifty 

 pounds. Wlicn a fellow was going to buy 

 a foot, they hardly thought him sane, and 

 inquired if he would pay on the spot. The 

 shop of the marchand de bois is decorated 

 outside with paintings of piles of wood in 

 perspective, presenting a perfect El Dorado, 

 like the piles of gold in the broker's win- 

 dows, only less real ; they sell also charbon 

 de terre and charbon de bois. They also 

 sell — it will make you laugh to hear — small 

 pine cones, four for a sous, for fuel. In the 

 winter they burn English coal, which is dear 

 too, mixed with wood. The forests in France 

 are mostly consumed, and great complaints 

 are made of the high duty on English coal. 



astonished his barber by telling him he 



had burnt up while camping out, many thou- 

 sand francs' worth of wood in one night! 

 Their manner of sawing wood expresses the 

 value they put upon it; instead of subjecting 

 it to the rude contact of a saw-horse, they 

 hold it carefully in their hands, and rub it 

 up and down the saw; the sawdust is of 

 course carefully preserved; they would as 

 soon waste gold dust. A good deal might 

 be said on the influence which the scarcity 

 of fuel has had on the French character, 

 driving them to the cafe and the spectacle, 

 from the fireside.— Pan's Corres. Salem 

 Gazette. 



Mice. 



The harvest mouse is the smallest of all 

 known British quadrupeds, only one-sixth of 

 the size of the common house mouse, for 

 two harvest mice placed in a scale will not 

 do more than weigh down a single halfpenny. 

 Its little nest is beautifully constructed of 

 leaves, and sometimes the softer portion of 

 reeds. About the middle there is a small 

 hole, just large enough to admit the point of 

 the little finger. This is the entrance to 

 the nest, which the n)ouse closes up when 

 it goes in quest of food; and yet this fairy 

 structure, which a man might enclose in the 

 palm of his hand, and which might be tum- 

 bled across the table like a ball without dis- 

 arranging it, often contains as many as eight 

 or nine little mice; for even when full grown 



the whole length of the head and body scarce- 

 ly exceeds two inches. During the wititer 

 months it retires to its burrow under the 

 ground, unless it should be fortunate enough 

 to get into a corn-stack. It is one of the 

 prettiest of our English animals, and may 

 be kept in a cage like white mice, where it 

 v/ill amuse itself for several minutes at a 

 time by turning round a wire wheel. Its 

 chief food is corn, although it will occasion- 

 ally feed upon insects. 



How the harvest mouse contrives to give 

 nourishment to eight or nine young ones in 

 that round confined little nest, was a puzzle 

 to that clever naturalist Gilbert White; and 

 as he could not resolve so difficult a question^ 

 he imagined that she must make holes in 

 different parts of the nest, and so feed one 

 at a time. It is very amusing to watch the 

 habits of this beautiful little creature in a 

 cage; to see how she will twine her tail 

 around- the wires, clean herself with her 

 paws, and lap water like a dog: it is the 

 little tomtit of animals. Even the common 

 mouse, which is so great a pest to our houses, 

 is an elegantly shaped little animal, although 

 it is such a plague in the cupboard and in 

 the larder. Wherever man goes, it follows 

 him; let him build ever so princely a man- 

 sion, he is sure to have the little mouse for 

 a tenant. He walks in we cannot tell how, 

 and when he has once obtained possession, 

 he is in no hurry to start again. He helps 

 himself to whatever he can get, without 

 asking any one's permission ; and he never 

 saw a carpet in his life that he thought 

 was too good for himself and his little com- 

 panions to play upon. — Rural England. 



The Potatoe. — Whether indigenous to 

 Peru, or imported from the neighbouring 

 country of Chili, it formed the great staple 

 of the more elevated plains under the Incas, 

 and its culture was continued to a height in 

 the equatorial regions which reached many 

 thousand feet above the limits of perpetual 

 snow in the temperate latitudes of Europe. 

 Wild specimens of this vegetable might be 

 seen still higher, springing up spontaneously 

 amidst the stunted shrubs that clothed the 

 lofly sides of the Cordilleras, till these grad- 

 ually subsided into the mosses and the short 

 yellow grass, pajonnl, which, like a golden 

 carpet, was unrolled around the base of the 

 mighty cones that rose far into the regions 

 of eternal silence, covered with the snows 

 of centuries. — Prescott. 



TriE object of a rotation, is the production 

 of the greatest profit in crops with the least 

 exhaustion of the soil. 



