30 NATURAL HISTOHY OF SELBOENE. 
never enter into houses; are carried into ricks and barns with the 
sheaves ; abound in harvest ; and build their nests amidst the straws of 
the corn above the ground, and sometimes in thistles. They breed as 
many as eight at a litter, in a little round nest composed of the blades 
of grass or wheat. 
One of these nests I procured this autumn, most artificially platted, 
and composed of the blades of wheat, perfectly round, and about the 
size of a cricket-ball ; 
with the aperture so 
ingeniously closed, 
that there was no 
discovering to what 
part it belonged. It 
was so compact and 
well filled, that it 
would roll across the 
table without being 
discomposed, though 
it contained eight 
little mice that were 
naked and blind. As 
this nest was per- 
fectly full, how could 
the dam come at her 
litter respectively so as to administer a teat to each 1 Perhaps she 
opens different places for that purpose, adjusting them again when the 
business is over ; but she could not possibly be contained herself in the 
ball with her young, which moreover would be daily increasing in bulk. 
This wonderful procreant cradle, an elegant instance of the efibrts 
of instinct, was found in a wheat-field suspended in the head of a 
thistle.^' 
A gentleman, curious in birds, wrote me word that his servant had 
shot one last January, in that severe weather, which he believed would 
puzzle me. I called to see it this summer, not knowing what to 
expect, but the moment I took it in hand, I pronounced it the male 
garrulus bohemicits or German silk-tail, from the five peculiar crimson 
* This is the harvest-mouse, mus messorius, of Shaw ; and it is to Mr. White that 
we are indebted for the first notice and description of it as a British species, 
which he communicated to Mr. Pennant, who introduced it in the British 
zoology upon that authority. It is not unfrequent in some of the southern 
Enghsh counties, but becomes more rare northward. In Scotland it occasionally 
occurs, and on the authority of the late Professor Macgillivray, has been obtained 
in Aberdeenshire. It is the smallest of our British mammalia, and its habits 
are very interesting. 
The nests are very curious structures, and instead of being formed upon the 
ground, as those of most of the species, the ball or nest is suspended from the stems 
of grain or other high vegetation. One is described in the Memoir of Dr. Gloger, 
It was in skilfulness of construction fully equal to that of most birds, was 
suspended from the summit of three straws of the common reed (Arundo phrag- 
mites), and was entirely composed of the pannicles and leaves "of the plants slit 
longitudinally, and intricately platted and matted together. Its internal cavity 
was small and round, and accessible only by a narrow lateral opening. " 
