22 



FANCY MICE. 



Alpine marmot had better go to the Alps than to Hatton Wall for 

 it. The younger generation may imagine that what a peasant from 

 the Grisons calls montanella, one from the Tridentina marmontana, 

 and an Italian from the Piedmontese marmotta, is really a new form 

 of rodent that does not exist in England, and, when he finds merely 

 the albino mouse submitted to his vision, he sees that he has not 

 more material at his disposal than he might have acquired at home. 

 I am inclined to believe that the real marmotte (murmelthier) is not 

 brought to England in a captive state. Of course, the white mice 

 can be produced anywhere. 



" Now a word on the minds and morals of mice. The author says 

 that ' the blacks are not of so delicate constitution as the whites, 

 and they are more wild and savage, and although they can easily be 

 taught tricks, &c., they do not learn so readily as the fawn-coloured 

 ones or the white' (p. 4). I am strongly inclined to believe that the 

 faculty of learning tricks is dependent, not on the external colour of 

 the animal, but on the manner and degree of housing or feeding him. 

 If a mouse be well treated, and the food supplied to him be regular, 

 and children be kept from poking him up, there is no reason why he 

 should not be capable of any amount of performances. Colour by 

 itself appears to make very little difference. 



" It is also stated of the house mouse that, ' So far as we have been 

 able to ascertain, they make no stores of food against a rainy day 

 (p. 9). This is probably due to their partial domestication, and to 

 there generally being a stock of food for them to gain access to — 

 matters that would probably change the habits of any animal.' 

 Before we criticise the reasons in this case, let us examine the fact. 

 In 1849 I found in a well known mouse nest in a bedroom in London, 

 a deposit consisting of bread, cheese, and especially of the debris of 

 walnuts, wherein the shells and peels contained a large proportion of 

 nutritious aliment. Similar instances have been recorded. My mice 

 in their cages hoard as much as they can before the cages are cleaned. 

 Of course, there may have been two reasons for this deposit — either 

 it was accumulated for the purpose of ' winter hoard ' or as a food 

 for the forthcoming layette. But in neither case, except in the most 

 figurative language, can it be stated that it was a store ' against a 

 rainy day,' as what the roofed-in house mouse have to do with rain 

 in their holes is an undiscovered and, perhaps, an irrelevant problem. 

 The only point I wish to prove is the fact that the house-mouse, 

 wild or tame, does accumulate food, and that in a degree that shows 

 it no unworthy member of the rodent order, who generally are dis- 

 tinguished for the accumulation of stores on the most gigantic scale, 

 and repeat in this habit the instincts of many animals beneath them 

 in the zoological series. 



" So far for the psychological characters of mice. Now regarding 

 the food. Bread and water is as good as bread and milk as a food, 

 and a pampered mouse becomes useless and infertile. Over-feeding 

 is as dangerous as under-feeding. On the other hand, a diet com- 

 posed almost entirely of oats is (on this side of the Tweed at least) 

 too low and too insipid for ordinary rodents. The common sense of 



