VI. 



'WEE TIM'ROUS BEASTIES.' 



A NEAT glass case, about two feet by one in 

 length and breadth, enclosing an artistic repre- 

 sentation of a mossy bank, shaded by gorse 

 and brackens and overhanging a bend of a 

 gravelly streamlet ; on a little boulder in the 

 stream two tiny creatures in black and white 

 velvet ; on the bank in life-like attitudes, eating, 

 playing or resting, ten more ' wee beasties ' 

 altogether a triumph of the modern taxidermist's 

 art. Here are six pairs, male and female, repre- 

 senting six separate well-defined species of our 

 lesser mammals, all of them collected from less 

 than an acre of the rough hillside on the border 

 of a West Highland loch. Usually classed 

 together as ' mice ' by the casual observer, there 

 is only one mouse proper among the six the 

 common or house mouse not being considered 

 worthy of admission ; of the remaining five 

 species, three are shrews and two are voles. 

 These tiny, glossy, silky-furred creatures, alike 



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