TOWN AND COUNTRY MICE 345 



sound, and sits apparently chewing the cud as 

 imperturbably as an ostler with a straw between his 

 lips. 



We found the other day, in a corner of the tool-shed, 

 a nest of the " wee timorous beastie," for undoubtedly 

 the "mouse" of which Burns wrote was the field-vole. 

 There were five or six helpless babies in the nest, and 

 while we watched, the mother vole came for them one 

 by one, and carried off the whole family to a safer 

 retreat. While we stayed quiet there was no hesitation 

 in her coming and going. Her straight, narrow-set 

 eyes pointed straight to the family to be fetched, and 

 she came at them in a straightforward, one-ideaed way. 

 A slight movement on our part gave a contrary 

 impulsive stimulus. She checked in her path, but 

 with her eyes still fixed on the major attraction. 

 Then she came on again, and, the power increasing 

 with the nearness of the object, she rushed the last few 

 inches, seized one of the naked youngsters, and bolted 

 as best she could for the retreat We do not believe 

 that the hearth-mouse would have come for her young 

 at all under like circumstances. She would accept 

 the first adverse verdict as final, and, mourn as she 

 might, would make no attempt at appeal. Civilisation 

 has thus far killed the primal maternal impulse with- 

 out having put in its place, as it has done for us, a 

 social standard of what it is right for even the most 

 timid and the most philosophic to suffer in defence of 

 a fellow-creature. 



The vole, like the rabbit, is sociable, but not social. 

 The devotion of the individual to the community does 

 not rise to the height that it reaches in the viscacha, 

 the members of one colony of which will, according to 



