THE BARBARY MOUSE. 
31 
are excessively prolific, the females producing a nume- 
rous brood of young several times in the year, and the 
young speedily becoming adult. Their too rapid in- 
crease is, however, prevented by the various enemies, 
both among the feathered and the four-footed races of 
animals, to whose attacks they are exposed when they 
venture to quit their nests in search of food. 
The ground colour of the Barbary Mouse is dark- 
brown, marked on each side with five or six yellowish 
stripes, about half as broad as the intervening spaces, 
extending along the whole length of the body, and 
becoming confused towards the under parts, which are 
nearly white. On the fore feet only three of the toes 
are at first sight visible ; and this circumstance, men- 
tioned in the specific character given by Linnaeus, has 
led many subsequent naturalists to doubt whether the 
Barbary Mouse really belonged to the genus with 
which it was associated. Linnaeus himself had, how- 
ever, stated in his description of the species, that 
rudiments of a thumb and also of a fifth toe, were 
observable on a closer inspection ; and this statement 
is fully confirmed by an examination of the specimens 
before us. Most of the doubts concerning their location 
have unquestionably arisen from the habit into which 
zoologists have unhappily fallen of referring to Gmelin's 
faulty compilation, in which this important modification 
of the character is altogether omitted, as though that 
work had absolutely superseded the original authority 
on which it is for the most part founded. It should 
also be mentioned that the teeth, which we were ena- 
bled to examine in the dead individual before alluded 
to, are precisely those of the other Rats ; so that there 
can no longer exist any excuse for dreaming with 
Gmelin, that it might possibly be a Cavy. 
There is, however, a trifling discrepancy between the 
