2 6o 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, 



