226 ZOOLOGICAL SKETCHES. 



church-mouse, the emblem of poverty, manages to find 

 the wherewithal of feathering her little nest. It must be 

 a poor place, indeed, where our sharp-toothed guests fail 

 to make themselves comfortable. In the " Paradise of 

 the Netherlands," the Elysian bog-meadows of Helvoet- 

 sluys, an acquaintance of mine built himself a model 

 dairy with glazed brick walls and fire-brick foundations 

 that seemed to defy the colonizing attempts of all rodents, 

 but before the end of the first summer he found that all 

 the same a pair of black rats had located and raised a 

 family in his store-room. They must have clambered in 

 through the window ; but it puzzled him how they had 

 managed their nest-hiding, till after a long search it 

 appeared that they had excavated a forty-pound Dutch 

 cheese, lined it with shreds of the tegumental canvas, 

 and retired from the world, like friars into a fat convent. 

 The fish-otter burrows in the root-tangle of solitary 

 river-banks, and hides the entrance so carefully that her 

 nest can be discovered only by the sheerest accident ; 

 but she is often victimized by another foible which seems 

 to be a peculiarity of the species. Otters are fond of 

 sliding. In winter-time they scrape the snow from the 

 top of a steep bank, and warm themselves whenever the 

 sun comes out, but every now and then they fling them- 

 selves down, spread their legs, and shoot down-hill with 

 all the delight of a school-boy trying a new sled. At 

 the first sign of danger they disappear like a flash, for 

 the end of their inclined plane communicates with a hole 



