44 CURIOUS HOMES AND THEIR TENANTS. 



extremely difficult to capture. If, indeed, it could be 

 caught, its captor would probably be somewhat sur- 

 prised to find that what had been taken was no bird 

 at all, but a little brown mouse about three inches 

 long, that had taken its flight without wings by the 

 aid of its long hind legs. It looks something like a 

 miniature kangaroo, except that it has a very long 

 tail. It is, in fact, the American jumping mouse. It 

 is an elegant, harmless, pretty little creature, hving 

 upon beech nuts and seeds of various kinds. 



It makes its nest about half a foot under the sur- 

 face of the ground, of fine grass, sometimes mingled 

 with wool, hair, and feathers. In this nest the mother 

 mouse has from two to four httle ones, and it is a 

 curious circumstance, carrying out to some extent 

 her kangaroo-like form and habit of life, that she 

 sometimes is seen with her little family cluiging to 

 her as she leaves her burrow in search of food. As a 

 protection from the cold of winter, the jumping mouse 

 is said to form " a little, hollow clay ball, in which it 

 coils itself up and goes comfortably to sleep." Pro- 

 fessor Tenney found one of these little animals, in 

 January, tightly coiled up with its long tail wrapped 

 ai)0ut it, in a grassy nest two feet underground. It 

 seemed to be dead, but came to life fast enough when 

 warmed. 



On the vast sandy plains that shut in Egypt on the 

 west, a part of the Great Sahara Desert, arid and water- 

 less, and so scantily furnished with vegetation that it 

 h hard to understand how any living creature can sub- 

 sist, there are numerous societies of the remarkable 



