552 NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 
uncomfortable, and therefore he occasionally had to be ejected while his 
bedding was changed and all made clean. At this treatment he would 
he would make spin, emitting all the while his peculiar note with great 
shrillness and rapidit And when admitted again after the house clear- 
ing, he would be in a uite of exasperation, scolding incessantly while 
busy rearranging things to suit his own mouse ideas. Several times he 
escaped from the cage, but was as often retaken, as his noise always be- 
trayed him, until at last, after he had been with us six weeks, he escaped 
once too often and we saw him no more. We supposed he had found his 
bia n the open door into the garden. This mouse was not the 
n house-mouse, but of a species which frequents barns or lives in 
m see and which was common in our own barn. It was of a light 
brown, with a whitish belly. Its nose was sharper than that of the 
house-mouse. On mentioning the subject to a friend, I was told that, 
“ singing mice," and that it was well known and talked of in the village. 
We know so little of the habits of the small nocturnal animals, that it 
may be possible that these fleld-mice possess more or less of the musical 
ing of a cricket, or small grasshopper if heard in the open air, or even in 
a barn. If heard in a room they would have a certain distinctness, but 
could not properly be likened to anything so decided and modulated as 
the song of a 
I have looked in vain for any intelligent account of the habits of our 
field-mice in works of Natural History. In Jesse's **Country Life," Lon- 
don, page 350, is mentioned as follows: “I have been twice to hear the 
singing mouse. Its song is plaintive, sweet and bte d and evi- 
dently proceeds from the throat. The notes are those of a canary bird, 
_ and on questioning the man, I found that one of these do had been 
en in the room in which the mouse was trapped ?"— W. H. EDWARDS. 
L SELECTION, A MODERN INSTANCE. —I am a frequenter of the 
iru having hunted there for twenty-one years. The common. 
American Deer (Cervus Virginianus) abounds there. About fourteen 
years ago, as nearly as I can remember, I first began to hear of *' Spike- 
horn Bucks.” The stories about them multiplied, and they evidently 
became more and more common from year to year. About five years ago 
I shot one of these ae a large buck with pa ape iini on ient 
presume the same is true north of Raquette Lake, but of this latter 
rye I cannot speak from personal observation, having visited it onlY 
The Spike-horn differs greatly from the common antler of the C. jie 
It consists of a single spike, more slender than the antler, 


