386 STRANGE DWELLINGS. 



had their uses. The country is liable to the attacks of locusts, 

 which in that year happened to be particularly numerous. 

 These destructive insects, as is the case with many of their 

 order, lay their eggs enclosed in capsules, something like the 

 well-known egg-cases of our too common cockroach. The mice 

 were very fond of the egg-capsules, and not only devoured them 

 as part of their daily food, but carried them away, laid them up 

 in their treasuries for a winter store, thus thinning the locust 

 armies far more effectually than man could have done. 



We now come to the Common Mouse of our houses {Mus 

 tnusculus). 



This little animal is a notable house-builder, making nests 

 out of various materials, and placing them in various situations. 

 There seems to be hardly any place in which a Mouse will not 

 establish itself, and scarcely any materials of which it will not 

 make its nest. Hay, leaves, straw, bitten into suitable lengths, 

 roots, and dried herbage, are the usual materials employed by 

 this animal when it is in the country. 



When it becomes a town mouse and lives in houses, it accom- 

 modates itself to circumstances, and is never in want of a situa- 

 tion for a nest or materials wherewithal to make a comfortable 

 house. It will use up old rags, tow, bits of rejected cord, paper, 

 and any such materials as can be found straggling about a house ; 

 and if it can find no fragments, it helps itself very unceremo- 

 niously, and cuts to pieces, books, newspapers, curtains, or 

 garments. 



Many instances of remarkable Mouse-nests are recorded, 

 among which the following are worthy of mention. 



As is usual, at the end of autumn, a number of flower-pots 

 had been set aside in a shed, in waiting for the coming spring. 

 Towards the middle of winter, the shed was cleared out, and 

 the flower-pots removed. While carrying them out of the shed 

 the owner was rather surprised to find a round hole in the mould, 

 and therefore examined it more closely. In the hole was seen, 

 not a plant, but the tail of a mouse, which leaped from the pot 

 as soon as it was set down. Presently another mouse followed 



