70 RAMBLES ABOUT HOME. 



themselves again, and ready to commence their round of 

 summer life with all the responsibilities that "house- 

 keeping " entails ; and then it is, after a long season of 

 comparative fasting, when the supply is scarcest, that 

 they have need of food, and, in order to recruit their 

 energies, I have found that this mouse has decided car- 

 nivorous habits. While by no means as bloody as a 

 weasel, or fierce as a brown rat, it nevertheless does not 

 hesitate to attack a weaker brother, and it is really a 

 skillful hunter of birds' nests, the contents of which, 

 whether eggs or young, it feasts upon with great relish. 

 Several times I have known them to rob the nests of 

 robins, song-sparrows, and the chewink or swamp-robin. 

 In one instance, a brood of young robins, nearly old 

 enough to leave the nest, were attacked by a pair of these 

 mice, during the^ brief absence of the parent birds, and 

 two of them were killed. Carefully keeping watch, I 

 found that as soon as the old birds retired from the nest, 

 to answer the calls of two of the young birds which were 

 on the ground, the mice stole back to the nest and began 

 eating the young birds they had killed. As soon as dis- 

 covered by the parent birds, they were forced to beat a 

 retreat, but they invariably returned when the oppor- 

 tunity offered, until the dead birds were nearly devoured. 

 Another and much rarer species of mouse, the pretty 

 kangaroo or jumping-mouse, merits our attention ; and 

 I only regret my opportunities for observing it have been 

 so few and unsatisfactory. This little mammal not a 

 true mouse, by-the-way is not unlike the preceding in 

 its habits, though he is easily distinguished by the won- 

 derful leaps he takes when pursued. From the few ob- 

 servations I have been able to make, this jactatoriai 

 locomotion is not its ordinary method of traveling. Al- 

 though its fore-limbs are so short, it scrambles over the 



