THE HOUSE MOUSE 635 



in Lamb. Horn., 53 (about 1175) ; in the latter it is stated that "furhf 

 sweote smel off chese he bicherred monie mus to f stoked Derivatives 

 of " sorex" as the French souris, similarly acquired a secondary, 

 restricted meaning, and came to denote the present species. In ancient 

 times, as mentioned on p. 578 above, the word " rat " also was perhaps 

 used for the House Mouse in western Europe. 



The mouse of course figures in many familiar expressions of ancient 

 origin; thus, "drunk as a dreynt (= drowned) mouse" is met with 

 about 1 3 10 (Wright, Lyric P., xxxix., iii.) and in Chaucer ( Wife's ProL, 

 246); "quiet as a mouse" starts in 1599 in Porter {Angry Women, 184, 

 71), and "wrecched mouses herte" occurs in Chaucer {Troilus and 

 Creseide, iii., 736). Mouse-traps are mentioned in circa 1475 — Cath. 

 Angl., 245/1 (MS. addit). 



In technical writings this species is usually the " Mouse " or 

 "Common Mouse," as in Pennant {Brit Zool.,\., 108, ed. 1776; Hist. 

 Quad., ed. 3, ii., 184). " Domestic Mouse " appears in Macgillivray (250). 

 " House Mouse " was apparently first used technically by Jenyns {Man., 

 31, 1835), and is to be preferred to "Common Mouse," generally used 

 in books, since our dwellings form the chief station of the species 

 in Britain, while out of doors its numbers are far inferior to those of 

 the Field Mouse. 



Local names (non-Celtic): — "Rick Mouse" and "Barn Mouse" (the 

 latter in Scotland) are names used for some outdoor mice, " larger 

 and darker than the House Mouse " (Tomes in Bell, ed. 2, 300). 



(Celtic) : — In the Celtic languages it is called simply " luch " (Scotch 

 and Irish Gaelic) or " llygoden " (Welsh) — these names being used with 

 or without distinctive epithets for most other " mice " as well. 



History, distribution, and status : — Although in all probability the 

 House Mouse is of Asiatic origin, we possess no decisive or very clear 

 evidence on this point. Its arrival in Europe must date from a very 

 remote time, for the animal was well known to the ancients : it is 

 definitely referred to by Aristotle {Hist. Anim., i., c. 2, 15) and Pliny 

 {Hist. Nat., viii., c. 56); numerous references to it by Greek writers 

 are quoted by Rolleston {Journ. Anat. and Phys., 1868, 47). Early 

 mediaeval writers on natural history, as Albertus Magnus, had exact 

 knowledge of it, and many references to it are of course to be found 

 in our own literature ; some of these are quoted above under Terminology, 

 and in the article on the Black Rat (p. 578). Donovan (xxxviii.) 

 thought it native, because it is mentioned in the Leges Wallicce more 

 than ten centuries ago. 



It arrived in North America shortly after the first settlement of 

 Europeans there, and is now distributed in all the settled parts of the 

 New World ; being scarce, however, in the extreme north, because it 

 does not always survive the winters (Lantz, op. cit., p. 11). 



