XIV 



MENTAL TRAITS OF A FEW RODENTS 



OUT of the vast mass of the great order of the gnawing 

 animals of the world it is possible here to consider only 

 half a dozen types. However, these will serve to blaze 

 a trail into the midst of the grand army. 



The White-Footed Mouse, or Deer Mouse. On the 

 wind-swept divides and coulees of the short-grass region of 

 what once were the Buffalo Plains of Montana, only the boldest 

 and most resourceful wild mice can survive. There in 1886 we 

 found a white-footed mouse species {Peromyscus leucopus), 

 nesting in the brain cavities of bleaching buffalo skulls, on 

 divides as bare and smooth as golf links. 



In 1902, while hunting mule deer with Laton A. Huffman in 

 the wildest and most picturesque bad-lands of central Montana, 

 we pitched our tent near the upper waterhole of Hell Creek.* 



For the benefit of our camp-fire, our cook proceeded to 

 hitch his rope around a dry cottonwood log and snake it close 

 up to our tent. When it was cut up, we found snugly housed 

 in the hollow, a nest, made chiefly of feathers, containing five 

 white-footed mice. Packed close against the nest was a pint 

 and a half of fine, clean seed, like radish seed, from some 

 weed of the Pulse Family. While the food-store was being 

 examined, and finally deposited in a pile upon the bare ground 

 near the tent door, the five mice escaped into the sage-brush. 

 Near by stood an old-fashioned buggy, which now becomes a 

 valuable piece of stage property 



The next morning, when Mr. Huffman lifted the cushion of 

 his buggy-seat, and opened the top of the shallow box under- 



• A few months later, acting upon the inf oimation of our fossil discoveries that we conveyed 

 to Professor Henry Fairfield Osbom, an expedition from the American Museum of Natural 

 History ushered into the scientific world the now famous Hell Creek fossil bed, and found, about 

 five hundied feet from the ashes of our camp-fire, the remains of Tyrannasamus rex. 



160 



