FIELD MICE 



in the balance of animal life. They are of no 

 direct use to man and so, in his ignorance of 

 nature's laws, through which he has time and 

 again decimated the useful of the animal world, 

 many of which consume these small rodents as 

 food, they have been more than able to hold their 

 own in the great struggle for existence. Some 

 of them take only a small fee for valuable ser- 

 vices ; the grain they destroy is by no means an 

 equivalent for the insects they exterminate. But 

 like selfish little thoughts and acts, quietly 

 multiplied, the seemingly harmless mice may do 

 great injury. Each took, to be sure, but a tiny 

 mouthful of grain, or a kernel or two of corn, 

 or nibbled off but a few spears of wheat or 

 timothy at a time, but they came often and 

 there were many of them. So in the end they 

 made their presence and power felt. They soon 

 laid waste the entire field. The foolish farmer, 

 with all his skill and his traps and his poisons, 

 could not replace nature's check. Aunt de- 

 clared that " if we allow thoughts of spite and 

 of revenge to creep into our minds and influ- 

 ence our lives ever so little we interfere with 

 nature's most powerful laws of love and har- 

 l>33] 



