THE COMMON MOUSE. 329 



ash colour above, and light ash colour beneath. The ears are 

 about half as long as the head, and the tail is rather shorter 

 than the body. 



Its pilfering and destructiveness in-doors are too well known 

 to require any special notice here ; but among the wheat-ricks 

 it commits much greater devastation, eating the grain and 

 forming a labyrinth of its burrows through the whole mass, 

 in company with the long -tailed field mouse (Mus sylvaticus) 

 and the harvest mouse (M. messorius). 



Though timid it is easily tamed, and becomes a pleasing little 

 pet j but it requires great vigilance to keep it from the jaws of 

 its great enemy, the house cat, to whom it is always a bon-bouche. 

 I may here introduce an account of an interesting experiment 

 which a person tried some years ago, to ascertain whether the 

 mouse has an instinctive dread of the cat. He caught a mouse 

 at the extremity of one of the galleries in the Newcastle coal 

 mines j and as no cat had up to that period been introduced 

 into the mine, he carried his prisoner home j and in order that 

 he might regain his self-possession after being introduced to 

 day-light, which in all probability he had never seen before, 

 he kept him confined in a glass lantern for a few days, where 

 he soon became so tame as to eat in his presence. On the fifth 

 or sixth day after his capture, the little fellow was sitting on 

 an upright piece of stick in the lantern and licking his body, 

 when a young cat was introduced into the room. She very 

 soon perceived the mouse in the lantern, and dashed at him 

 with her customary ferocity. " To my surprise and amuse- 



