OF SELBORNE. 57 



their sides divides the shades of their back and belly. 

 They never enter into houses ; are carried into ricks 

 and barns with the sheaves; abound in harvest; and 

 build their nests amidst the straws of the corn above 

 the ground, and sometimes in thistles. They breed as 

 many as eight at a litter, in a little round nest composed 

 of the blades of grass or wheat 4 . 



One of these nests I procured this autumn, most arti- 

 ficially platted, and composed of the blad-es of wheat ; 

 perfectly round, and about the size of a cricket-ball ; 

 with the aperture so ingeniously closed, that there was 

 no discovering to what part it belonged. It was so 

 compact and well filled, that it would roll across the 

 table without being discomposed, though it contained 

 eight little mice that were naked and blind. As this 

 nest was perfectly full, how could the dam come at her 

 litter respectively so as to administer a teat to each? 

 Perhaps she opens different places for that purpose, 

 adjusting them again when the business is over: but 

 she could not possibly be contained herself in the ball 

 with her young, which moreover would be daily increas- 

 ing in bulk. This wonderful " procreant cradle," an 

 elegant instance of the efforts of instinct, was found in 

 a wheat field suspended in the head of a thistle 5 . 



4 I took up one of these little mice in a stubble field in Hampshire, in 

 September, and put it into a cage. The next morning it had produced six 

 young ones, and a few hours after, it had eaten them all up. W. H. 



5 Zoology is indebted to Gilbert White for the addition to its stores of 

 the curious little mouse above referred to, which both by its minute- 

 ness and by the singularity of its habits, is well adapted to attract atten- 

 tion. The notice in the text is the first account that was given of it, 

 and the particulars there recorded, with the additional information 

 contained in some of the subsequent Letters, constituted for many years 

 the whole stock of our knowledge respecting it. Pennant, to whom 

 the facts relating to it were communicated, inserted it immediately in 

 an Appendix to the earliest octavo edition of his British Zoology ; 

 describing it as the less long-tailed field mouse, and acknowledging 

 himself indebted for his acquaintance with it to Gilbert White, whose 

 account of it he published almost entire. Other zoologists were con- 

 tented with copying what Pennant had printed ; with the exception of 

 Pallas, who, ten years later, appears to have described it under the 



