8 



FANCY MICE. 



as mice do best in a state of semi-darkness ; besides, to our fancy,, 

 they look too much like a prison, neither do the animals appear tO' 

 such advantage as in the one described above. The form of the 

 cage is, however, a matter of individual fancy ; but we would 

 remind fanciers that it is the mice, and not the cage, that should be 

 looked at. In no case do poor, miserable specimens look well in fine' 

 cages —quite the reverse. 



We have seen mice kept in a large-sized rectangular vivarium, 

 having a perforated zinc top for ventilation, and a layer of Sin. of' 

 dry soil at the bottom for the animals to burrow in. Here they 

 lived in health and bred freely, and from the fact of the earth being 

 a powerful deodoriser, there was little or no smell. The earth was 

 changed at intervals when it became foul. The plan had many 

 advantages, not the least of which was the ease with which the mice 

 could always be seen. The " Vivarium " cages admit of very pretty 

 arrangement with "rockery," little houses with ladders, &c., and 

 the mice so housed are most entertaining. 



FOOD AND FEEDING. 



The food of the mouse, when at liberty, consists of what it can 

 obtain. Grain, roots, grass and other seeds, bread, meat, cheese^ 

 candle, &c., all come alike, and it is often the case that this indis- 

 criminate use of food leads to disease and death. 



The field mouse forms a granary, and in it stores up a vast 

 accumulation of food : nuts, acorns, wheat, beans, and various other 

 seeds, generally form the staple, but occasionally pieces of bread, 

 cheese, suet, &c., are found stored away. We particularly 

 remember two cases where this foresight, or instinct, was shown, 

 although it is common to the field mouse. In Kent we were- 

 employed near a nut plantation, watching some men ploughing 

 — in fact, there was a wager as to the best ploughman — and 

 when near the hedgerow, a large number of "mouse nests," as- 

 the ploughman called them, were turned over, and altogether 

 about two bushels of cob-nuts were picked up. In one of these 

 stores we counted seven hundred and ten nuts, one hundred 

 and twenty acorns, forty-five beans, about a pint of wheat and 

 barley, and seven peas, besides other seeds. Thus the pair of mice 

 must have made over a thousand journeys to collect these together. 

 No peas had been grown within a quarter of a mile of the spot, 

 so we supposed those in the store had been dropped by the birds. 

 The nuts were fully thirty yards off, so that an immense lot of work 

 had to be gone through to collect so large a store. In the other 

 case we were planting larch near a large plantation of spruce and 

 Scotch fir ; we opened several nests, and got over thirty pounds 

 of seed (not cones), and from one nest alone we obtained over seven 

 pounds of fir seeds, three pounds of acorns, and over six and a 



