350 
PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY. 
[Book viir. 
have been made to form a kind of stuff of the hair of these 
animals ; but it is not so soft as when attached to the skin, 
and, in consequence of the shortness of the hairs, soon falls to 
pieces. 
CHAP. 82. (56.) ANIMALS WHICH ARE TAMED IN PART ONLY. 
Hares are seldom tamed, and yet they cannot properly be 
called wild animals ; indeed, there are many species of them 
which are neither tame nor wild, but of a sort of intermediate 
nature ; of the same kind there are among the winged animals, 
swallows and bees, and among the sea animals, the dolphin. 
(57.) Many persons have placed that inhabitant of our 
houses, the mouse, in this class also ; an animal which is not 
to be despised, for the portents which it has afforded, even in 
relation to public events. By gnawing the silver shields at 
Lanuvium,^^ mice prognosticated the Marsian war ; and the 
death of our general, Carbo, at Clusium,*^ by gnawing the 
latchets with which he fastened his shoes.''^ There are many 
species of this animal in the territory of Cyrenaica ; some of 
them with a wide, others with a projecting, forehead, and some 
again with bristling hair, like the hedgehog.*- We are in- 
formed by Theophrastus, that after the mice had driven the 
inhabitants of Gyara*^ from their island, they even gnawed the 
iron ; which they also do, by a kind of natural instinct, in the 
iron forges among the Chalybes. In gold mines, too, their 
39 This is referred to by Cicero, in his treatise, De Divinatione, B. i. c. 
44, and B. ii. c. 27 ; in the latter he treats it as an idle tale. — B. 
4« See B, iii. c. 8. 
^1 C. Papiriiis Carbo, a contemporary and friend of the Gracchi. In 
B.C. 119, the orator, Licinius Crassus, brought a charge against him, the 
nature of which is not known ; but Carbo put an end to his life, by taking 
cantharides. 
*2 These different species are thus characterized by Cuvier : *'Les pre- 
miers sont les souris et les rats, de formes ordinaires ; les seconds, les 
grandes musaraignes [shrew-mice] de la taille du rat, telles que Ton en 
trouve en Egypte ; les troisiemes, une espece de souris particuliere a 
I'Egypte, et peut-etre a la Barbaric, armee d'epines parmi ses poils dont 
Aristote avait deja parle (B. vi. 1. 37, cap. ult.) et que M. Geoffrey a re- 
trouvee et nommee mus cahirinus." Ajasson, vol. vi. p. 467, and Le- 
maire, tihi supra. — B. See B. viii. c. 55, and B. x. c. 85. 
*3 JElian, Hist. Anim. B. v. c. 11, mentions this circumstance, but says 
that it occurred in the island of Paros. For Gyara, see B. iv. c. 23. 
