50 
NATURAL HISTORY 
lioar any more about those birds which I suspected were 
Merulce torquatoe} 
As to the small mice, I have farther to remark, that 
though they hang their nests for breeding up amidst the 
straws of the standing corn, above the ground, yet I find 
that, in the winter, they burrow deep in the earth, and 
make warm beds of grass; but their grand rendezvous 
seems to be in corn-ricks, into which they are carried at 
harvest. A neighbour housed an oat-rick lately, under the 
thatch of which were assembled near a hundred, most of 
which were taken ; and some I saw. I measured them ; 
and found that, from nose to tail, they were just two 
inches and a quarter, and their tails just two inches long.^ 
Two of them, in a scale, weighed down just one copper 
halfpenny, which is about the third of an ounce avoirdupois ; 
so that I suppose they are the smallest quadrupeds in this 
island. A full-grown Mus domesticus medius weighs, I 
find, pne ounce lumping weight, which is more than six 
times as much as the mouse above ; and measures from 
nose to rump four inches and a quarter, and the same in 
its tail. 
Wo have had a very severe frost and deep snow this 
month. My thermometer was one day fourteen degrees 
and a half below the freezing point-, within doors. The 
tender evergreens were injured pretty much. It was very 
providential that the air was still, and the ground well 
covered with snow, else vegetation in general must have 
sufiered prodigiously. There is reason to believe that some 
days were more severe than any since the year 1739-40.^ 
^ See antek, p. 44. 
2 It is perhaps not generally known that the tail of the harvest mouse 
is prehensile, and is in consequence of great service to the little animal 
when descending the wheat stalks amongst which its nest is usually 
suspended. In "The Zoologist" for 1843, p. 289, will be found a 
woodcut in illustration of this fact as observed by the Kev, Pemberton 
Bartlett. — ^Ed. 
^ A full account of the effects of this short but intense frost will be 
found in Letter LXI. to the Hon. Daines Barrington. 
