The Ways of the Dormouse. 99 



with tlie liole already drilled. This is not so. The kernel 

 adheres to the shell, filling up all its interior, and is 

 scraped off piecemeal, as I described it. After a night's 

 feeding — for it is by night the Dormouse does most of 

 its eating — several nuts will be left with the kernel but 

 partly consumed, these to be cleaned out at the next 

 meal. I have examined them thus in all stages, from 

 the shell half-full to only a small morsel remaining at the 

 bottom, and invariably to see the gouge-like track of the 

 creature's teeth all over the rasped (not gnawed) surface, 

 this itself being always eaten down level, with no in- 

 equalities left save the marks of the incisors. The only 

 part of the performance I am unable to explain is, how 

 the detached pieces are extracted from the shell. The 

 hole is too small to admit even the animal's snout, save 

 with closed jaws, and thos it could not possibly take the 

 chips up in its teeth. Therefore they must be got out by 

 one of two ways — either by being spitted on the sharp- 

 pointed incisors of the lower jaw, or licked up by the 

 tongue. The latter, I take it, will prove to be the solution 

 of the enigma. 



And first, another note in connection with the hazel 

 nuts. These are often without any kernel, a circum- 

 stance the Dormouse is not aware of till it has penetrated 

 through the shell, making a hole not much larger than 

 the head of a pin. Then, with the tongue no doubt, 

 discovering there is nothing eatable inside, it drops that 

 nut, and tackles on to another. And, as further proof 

 that the creature's instincts are not infallible, but, indeed, 

 rather blind, I have known it return to the same empty 

 shell, and open a hole at the opposite end, to meet with 

 a like disappointment. Whether while drilling this 

 second hole it remembered having made the first one, I 



