mice's nests. 39 
The winters of Andalusia are so mild, that, in all likelihood, the 
soft-billed birds that leave us at that season may find insects 
sufficient to support them there.* 
Some young man, possessed of fortune, health, and leisure, 
should make an autumnal voyage into that kingdom ; and should 
spend a year there, investigating the natural history of that 
vast country. Mr. Willughbyf passed through that kingdom on 
such an errand ; but he seems to have skirted along in a super- 
ficial manner and an ill humour, being much disgusted at the 
rude dissolute manners of the people. 
I have no friend left now at Sunbury to apply to about the 
swallows roosting on the aits of the Thames ; nor can I hear any 
more about those birds which I suspected were meridce torquatce. 
As to the small mice, I have further to remark, that though 
they hang their nests for breeding up amidst the straws of the 
standing corn, above the ground ;X 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 an hun- 
dred, 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 sup- 
pose they are the smallest quadrupeds in this island.§ A full- 
grown mus medius domesticus weighs, I find, one ounce lumping 
* Syria, Egypt, and the interior of the Barbarj' States, appear to be the general rendezvous, iCi 
winter, of most of our European sunremer-birds of passage, but very few, if any, remain in Spain. 
—Ed. 
t See Ray's Travels, p. 466. 
t The breeding nests of the harvest mouse (mus messorius) vary a good deal in form, some of 
them being round, others oval, and many of a pear shape. They are usualij'^ attached to some 
growing vegetable, a bean stalk, or stem of wheat, with which they rock and waver in the wind. 
Occasional!)', however, they are fixed in a bush.— Ed. 
§ They are the smallest of our known British quadrupeds, but not the most diminutive of the 
genus, a yet more minute species having been discovered in France, and named by M. F, Cuvier 
M- pumilns- There is indeed great reason to suspect that additional species will yet be detected 
in our own island, particularly in North Britain, whence 1 have information of at least two that I 
cannot reconcile with any description. Our smaller mammifers have been too much neglected by 
naturalists. The above-mentioned mouse (^f. messorius), which Mr. White has the merit of 
discovering, is an extremely beautiful little species, common in many districts of the south 
of Englan-d, and is more allied to the house-mouse {M. domesticus) than to the common field- 
mouse or **, jumper-mouse," as the latter is termed in Surrey (iVJ. sylvaticus), but is a livelier 
and more active species than either, and more scansorial in its make, having longer and more 
flexile toes, and a considerable muscular power in the tail, by means of which it is enabled to 
obtain a firmer hold of whatever it is climbing onj by slightly coiling this organ around it, but 
which does not exactly amount to what is ordinarily designated a prehensile power (as has been 
