260 ANIMALS AT WORK AND PLA Y 



tion when the mice pay marked attention to the 

 stock he has selected. Those whose industry has 

 led them to spend a vacation reading ' in College/ 

 realise the full burden of the house mice when all 

 those on the staircase * trek ' to the solitary student's 

 room, and make merry on his stores. They, like 

 the rats, have their own sense of humour. A landed 

 proprietor of our acquaintance had invented a peculiar 

 form of rent-audit for a set of ' small holdings.' 

 He chalked a rough diagram of the ' plots ' on a 

 cupboard shelf, duly labelled with the names of the 

 tenants, and deposited on each the sums paid in on 

 Lady Day. The little piles of gold or silver were 

 a visible witness to the punctual payment of his 

 tenants ; and among them was one new and crisp 

 ^5 note. The mice explored the cupboard also, 

 and abstracted the note, leaving behind one or two 

 small fragments which had been bitten off as 

 samples. 



The odious * black beetle/ which is, properly 

 speaking, not a beetle at all, is, like a number of 

 other insect pests, not indigenous to England, though 

 it is now a 'resident alien.' The only use which we 

 ever heard found for black beetles, was to feed the 

 first birds of paradise brought to England by ship 

 from the Malay Archipelago. No four-footed creature 

 that we know will eat them except the hedgehog, 



