IHE HOUSE. 



procored some of the mice mentioned in my former letter, — a 

 young one and a female with young, both, of which I have pre- 

 served in brandy. I'rom the colour, size, shape, and manner 

 of nesting, I maie no doubt but that the species is nondescript. 

 . . . . They breed as many as eight at a litter, in a little 

 round nest, composed of tiie blades of grass or wheat. One of 

 these 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 fitted that it would roll across the 

 table without being decomposed, though it contained eight little 

 mice that were naked and bhnd. As this nest was perfectly 

 full, how could the dam come at her litter respectively, so as to 

 administer a teat to each P 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 would, moreover, 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." 



Eespeoting the curious shape of the nest of the harvest- 

 mouse, Mr. Wood is inclined to suppose that the little builder 

 remained inside while engaged in its construction, and, after 

 weaving it around her, pushed her way out through the loosely] 

 woven wall and rearranged the gap from the outside. It may 

 be, he suggests, that the nest is the joint work of both seiesj 

 one without the nest and the other within. 



" As to the harvest mice," continues Gilbert White, " I have 

 further to remark, that though they hang their nests for breed- 

 ing up amidst the straws of the standing corn above the ground, 

 yet I find that in the winter they burrow deep into the earth 

 and make warm beds of grass ; but the grand rendezvous seems 

 to be in oom-ricks, into which they are carried at harvest. A 

 neighbour housed an pat-rick latdy, under the thatch of which 

 were assembled nearly a hundred, most of which were taken," 

 and some I saw I iheasured, and found that from nose to tail 

 they were just two inches and a quarter, and their tails just 

 two inches long. Two of them in a scale weighed down just 

 one copper halfpenny, which is about the third of an ounce 

 avoirdupois; so that I suppose they are the smallest quad- 

 lupeds in this island. A full-grown domestic mouse weighs, I 

 find, an ounce lumping weight, which is more than sis times aa 



