APPENDIX. 



47 



DISEASES. 



The diseases of fancy mice are as yet very little understood^ 

 and, unfortunately, it is unlikely that any scientist will ever 

 take sufficient interest in them to experiment for the cure of 

 their somewhat numerous ills, doubtless as interesting in their 

 degree as the woes of cat or dog. 



One complaint which decimates many a mousery, and is very 

 easily diagnosed, is scrofula. Due, in the first place, to un- 

 sanitary surroundings, bad food, and bad air, this virulent 

 disease is so easily communicable, both by contact and by 

 heredity, that it sometimes takes the form of an epidemic, 

 and would appear to the ignorant observer to be some com- 

 plaint akin to bird-fever, so rapidly will it carry off mouse 

 after mouse within the affected area. 



In a creature whose period of gestation is only about four- 

 teen days, the progress of a disease, which in a larger animal 

 would occupy a proportionately longer time in its development,, 

 is naturally very rapid, and the miserable little victim of 

 hereditary or acquired scrofula will waste away in a very few 

 days to an utter wreck of skin and bone. The disease at 

 times seems to lie dormant, just as in the human subject, 

 until some exciting cause, such as a chill caught at a show or 

 an accidental deprivation of food for a day, sets it to work 

 and sounds the death-knell of the affected animal ; for, once 

 attacked, no mouse can be cured or even kept long alive. 



According to the ideas prevalent among many people who- 

 keep such small pets as mice, cleanliness is a very secondary 

 consideration ; and such an extravagance as a penny glass, 

 feeding-vessel for each cage would not be dreamed of. The 

 food, whatever it may be — dry corn and seed or sloppy bread- 

 and-milk — is thrown on the floor of the cage, already foul 

 with the dirt of many days ; and the wretched little inmates, 

 very likely crowded by half-dozens into cages not large enough 

 for one mouse to be healthy in, have to eat under these 

 loathsome conditions or starve. 



In a state of nature, the mouse is an exceedingly clean 

 little animal, and though it is not always particular as to the 

 state in which it leaves food for those who come after, it will 

 never willingly eat anything itself which is not strictly clean. 

 Any soil on its dainty coat is a great trial, and a well-kept 

 mouse washes its face and hands as religiously after meals as 

 that most finical creature, the cat. If people who grudge 

 the trouble of cleaning out their mouse-cages and feeding 

 their mice from clean glasses or saucers, would only consider 

 the extent to which hunger must torment a mouse before 

 it will do such violence to its natural and most beautiful 

 instincts as to eat stale and dirty food under the conditions 

 described, they would surely elect to give up keeping their 

 so-called pets rather than subject them to such misery. 



D 



