es 1694 | SCIENCE. 541 
animals,—the jumping-mouse (Zapus hudso- jumping-mouse, does not do. However this 
nius) and the white-footed mouse (Hespero- may be, the fact remains that both these ro- 
mys leucopus). These two mice, popularly so dents are quite sensitive to cold, and hibernate 
ealled, hibernate with great | 
regularity in one sense, but 
differ inter se in another. 
The former, once torpid, 
remain so until spring, a 
few warm days in winter 
failing to rouse them; but 
the white-footed mouse 
seems simply to sleep 
soundly rather than grow 
torpid, and responds with 
considerable promptness to 
any disturbance. The 
jumping-mouse builds a 
nest of leaves and grass at 
a considerable depth from 
the surface of the ground 
(not a ‘ball of mud,’ as 
stated in the Encyclopaedia 
Britannica, art. ‘ Jerboa’), 
and, once fairly settled 
therein, is beyond the va- 
rious sudden changes of our 
winters: the white-footed 
mouse, on the contrary, uti- 
lizes an old bird’s-nest, or agg 
has a resting-place beneath | Fig. 1. 
a log or in a half-decayed 
stump. Insuch positions, of course, the occu- as soon as winter sets in; yet how very differ- 
pant is more likely to be disturbed, and is also ently is this faculty exercised! C. C. Assorr. 
directly exposed to the varying temperature. 
ANOTHER ANCIENT HUMAN SKELE- 
TON FROM MENTONE, FRANCE. 
_ We owe to the favor of Prof. Spencer 
F. Baird, secretary of the Smithsonian in- 
stitution, photographs of a human skull 
exhumed last month from one of the grottos 
at Mentone, France (next to that in which 
Riviére discovered a skeleton twelve years 
ago), together with a letter from Hon. 
Thomas Wilson, U.S. consul at Nice, un- 
der date of March 31, from which we ex- 
tract the following statements :— 
The skeleton to which the skull belongs 
was found in the ‘ fourth cavern,’ at a depth 
of eight metres and a half, under well-de- 
fined strata; one, a metre and a half thick, 
composed of cinders, ashes, burnt earth, 
and charcoal. More or less worked flint 
chips were found with it, comparing well 
with those found with Riviére’s skeleton. 
Is it to meet the requirements of this condition The skeleton was complete ; but, as the result 
that this mouse lays up a goodly stock of food of a quarrel over tne ownership, the body was 
during autumn?— something the jerboa, or stolen, and its whereabouts are still unknown.. 
