THE MOUSE. 



pions — he will, should mother mouse present him with a litter, 

 take on himself the behaviour of a ruffian — ^nay, of a cannibal, 

 and devour them, body and bones, before her eyes. Therefore, 

 when the interesting event is at hand, box him up straight off. 



It is a mistake to siippose that the mouse deUghts in the 

 unpleasant odour his presence in a confined space is sure to 

 generate. You may depend he dislikes it as much as we do, 

 and is very delighted to have his bouse tidied up, and a fresh 

 bed laid. To ensure proper cleanliness, the entire dwelling 

 Jionld have a double floor, and the upper floor should be drawn 

 out and scraped at least every other day. The perches and 

 tiny brackets round the open cage should be movable, and taken 

 out and cleaned as often as the false bottom. By the bye, it 

 should be mentioned that a goodly number of these perches 

 and bars and brackets should be adjusted in what may be 

 called the mouse's day-room. The little creatures will be found 

 to take fiiU advantage of these accessories to climbing and 

 swinging and leaping, and it is much better exercise for them 

 than strugghng and panting and clutching at nothing in a 

 revolving cylinder. 



Always be careful, when you remove the bottom of the cage 

 to clean it, that it is perfectly dry before you replace it. As 

 to bedding, almost anything that is soft and easily spread — a 

 little cow-hair or white wadding will do ; but there is one thing 

 that win not do, and that is wadding that has been dyed black. 

 Whatever your breed of mice may be, a night's lodging on 

 black wadding will pretty certainly kill them. 



Should the reader be induced to avoid the expense of pur- 

 chasing white or party-coloured mice, and to try his hand on 

 the common brown sort, he has nothing to do but to procure a 

 few mice not more than a month or six weeks old. They wiU, 

 of course, be savage enough at first, but a fast of two, or at 

 most three days, wiU generally reduce them to so tame a condi- 

 tion that they will come to the bars and eat from your hand. 

 Let them, after a moderate meal, fast again for a day, and, 

 when you approach the cage with some such sound as you used 

 when last you fed them, they scramble to the front, and squeak 

 their delight at renewing your acquaintance. If after this you 

 are not friends, do not blame the mice, but set yourself down as 

 an individual unpossessed of the knack of mouse-taming. 



