CONCLUSION. 



21 



fight and assert all the rights of females, any young litter will be 

 devoured as soon as born by some disappointed odalisque. A desire 

 for protection of the litter should lead to the rejection of this plan ; 

 and a wish to avoid the catastrophe indicated in Isaiah iv., 1, should 

 protect the buck himself from being, peradventure, devoured. 

 Besides, if a number of females are placed together, they clamour 

 for their victuals, and the weakest of the lot may be accidentally 

 injured. 



The "best laid schemes o' mice and men. 

 Gang aft agley. 



"Another statement of 'An Old Fancier' is more significant to the 

 zoologist. He suggested that ' the long-tailed field mouse is a very 

 pretty and elegant animal . . . and serves well to strengthen a strain 

 of fancy mice which has been debilitated by much in-and-in breed- 

 ing.' * This statement deserves some comment. If the long-tailed 

 field mouse, or Mus sylvaticiis, really breeds with another species, 

 the Mus musculus, a curious fact would be gained for science that 

 even the best students of hybridityf have not noticed. Of course, 

 the greater size of the long-tailed field mouse might be supposed to 

 be a bar to a successful brood ; but even this fact should not blind 

 one to the idea that the long-tailed field mouse might breed with the 

 house mouse. But, as a fact, does it ? Are we quite certain that all 

 the individuals of wild mice that we might find in hayricks are in 

 reality M. sylvatici ? It is probable that a large proportion are 

 merely house mice that have taken to the open, and peradventure, by 

 good living, freedom from the assaults of cats, and distance from 

 their enemies, acquired the long ears of the long-tailed field mouse. 

 If, however, the two widely separated species have really bred 

 together (I do not see why not), I should be prepared for the recep- 

 tion of a number of detailed facts respecting the progeny, and I 

 should be glad to get them. 



" While on this subject, let me notice the common idea that Sa- 

 voyard children take with them on their organic peregrinations the 

 marmotte in a little cage. The marmotte — not, of course, the mar- 

 mot — is the Arctomys marmola, a species of rodent, bearing some 

 resemblance to the dormouse. Even Littre, who is about as unpro- 

 saic and uninventive a writer as any that can be found, speaks of the 

 little Savoyard girls, who exhibited marmottes during the last cen- 

 tury, being covered with a peculiar bonnet, consisting of a piece of 

 stuff placed on the head, the point behind, and the ends tied under 

 the chin, which style of head gear is also called marmotte. That 

 these animals may have been some sort of rodent exhibited in 

 boxes that these girls carried of course I do not say ; but the fact 

 remains that inquiry amongst the low Italians has satisfied me 

 that the domestic pet they exhibit is merely the common albino 

 white house mouse, and that those people who want to see the 



* See the first edition of this hook. 



t " Paul Broca. Hyhridity in Man and Animals." English translation by G. 

 Carter Blake. 8vo. London. 1864. 



