THE DESERT JERBOAS 
Mice, Rats, and Such Small Deer 
Now we come to an immense assemblage of small mammals, 
embracing more than one hundred genera and perhaps ten 
times as many species, which must be sketched very rapidly, 
although full of interest for the naturalist and often prominent 
in our daily life. This is the murine or myomorphic section 
A JERBOA, SHOWING TUFTED TAIL, 
of the Rodentia, distinguished from the other suborders by cer- 
tain peculiarities of the skull, and by the circumstance, as- 
sociated with their speed and leaping powers, that the long 
bones (tibia and fibula) of the leg are united into a cannon 
bone; and containing the jerboas, rats, mice, lemmings, and 
their kin, whose fare is mainly vegetable, and which for safety 
and warmth dwell in holes, and go abroad by night rather than 
by day. 
Most of the species are very small, one of the largest being 
the Cape jumping-hare of South Africa, which looks like a rabbit 
wearing a big squirrel’s tail. It is a burrowing, 
nocturnal, far-leaping animal of southern Africa, 
and is a cousin of the tiny, pug-nosed and comical jerboas of 
the desert country of northern Africa, Arabia, and central Asia. 
The accompanying sketch shows how they look; the largest is 
no more than seven inches long, and the smallest scarcely half 
that, not counting the long balancing pole of a tail. All are 
softly fawn color, matching the sands over which they skip 
423 
Jerboas. 
