416 



CHAPTERS ON THE NATURAL HISTORY 



so. They can be recognized at once by their big eyes and their 

 white under parts. Of course, in making this statement, I refer 

 to only such parts of the United States or elsewhere where the 

 Deer mice are geographically distributed. When I was a boy 

 and lived on Long Island Sound in southwestern Connecticut, we 



FIG. 110. TRUE'S PINON MOUSE (P. truei). 



Life size from nature 



used to capture them in small figure-of-4 traps, and most interest- 

 ing little pets they made when properly cared for. 



During the spring of 1896, at my home here near Washington, 

 D. C., while superintending the felling of a large poplar tree, the 

 victim of a hurricane that a few days before had swept the coun- 

 try, my son captured one of these mice. He was in the tree at the 

 time, when the mouse was disturbed at its roots by the axman; it 



