30 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



never enter into houses ; are carried into ricks and barns with the 

 sheaves ; abound in harvest ; and build their nests amidst the straws of 

 the corn above the ground,, and sometimes in thistles. They breed as 

 many as eight at a litter, in a little round nest composed of the blades 

 of grass or wheat. 



One of these nests I procured this autumn, most artificially platted, 

 and composed of the blades of wheat, perfectly round, and about the 



size of a cricket-ball ; 

 with the aperture so 

 ingeniously closed, 

 that there was no 

 discovering to what 

 part it belonged. It 

 was so compact and 

 well filled, that it 

 would roll across the 

 table without being 

 discomposed, though 

 it contained eight 

 little mice that were 

 naked and blind. As 

 this nest was per- 

 HARVEST MICE. fectly full, how could 



, the dam come at her 



litter respectively so as to administer a teat to each? Perhaps she 

 opens different places for that purpose, adjusting them again when the 

 business is over ; but she could not possibly be contained herself in the 

 ball with her young, which moreover would be daily increasing in bulk. 

 This wonderful procreant cradle, an elegant instance of the efforts 

 of instinct, was found in a wheat-field suspended in the head of a 

 thistle.* 



A gentleman, curious in birds, wrote me word that his servant had 

 shot one last January, in that severe weather, which he believed would 

 puzzle me. I called to see it this summer, not knowing what to 

 expect, but the moment I took it in hand, I pronounced it the male 

 garrulus boJiemicus or German silk-tail, from the five peculiar crimson 



* This is the harvest-mouse, mus messorius, of Shaw ; and it is to Mr. White that 

 we are indebted for the first notice and description of it as a British species, 

 which he communicated to Mr. Pennant, who introduced it in the British 

 zoology upon that authority. It is not unfrequent in some of the southern 

 English counties, but becomes more rare northward. In Scotland it occasionally 

 occui-s, and on the authority of the late Professor Macgillivray, has been obtained 

 in Aberdeenshire. It is the smallest of our British mammalia, and its habits 

 are very interesting. 



The nests are very curioiis structures, and instead of being formed upon the 

 ground, as those of most of the species, the ball or nest is suspended from the stems 

 of grain or other high vegetation. One is described in the Memoir of Dr. Gloger, 

 "It was in skilfumess of construction fully equal to that of most birds, was 

 suspended from the summit of three straws of the common reed (Arundo phrag- 

 mites), and was entirely composed of the pannicles and leaves of the plants slit 

 longitudinally, and intricately platted and matted together. Its internal cavity 

 was small and round, and accessible only by a narrow lateral opening. " 



