200 
MAMMALIA. 
took the little mouse into my hand. It exhibited no motion or 
sign of life. Its eyes and mouth were shut tight, and its little fore 
feet or hands were shut and placed close together. Everything 
indicated that the mouse was perfectly dead, excepting the fact 
that it was not as rigid as perhaps a dead mouse would be in the 
winter. I tied the mouse and nest in my handkerchief and carried 
them to Vincennes. Arriving at Dr. Patton’s office I untied my 
treasures, and took out the mouse and held it for some time in my 
hand ; it still exhibited no sign of life ; but at length I thought I 
saw a very slight movement in one of the hind legs. Presently 
there was a very slight movement of the head, yet so feeble that 
one could hardly be sure it was real. Then there came to be some 
evidence of breathing, and a slight pressure of my fingers upon 
the tail near the body was followed by an immediate but feeble 
movement of one of the hind legs. At length there was unmis- 
takable evidence that the animal was breathing, but the breathing 
was a labored action, and seemingly performed with great diffi- 
culty. As the mouse became warmer the signs of life became more 
and more marked ; and in the course of the same afternoon on 
which I brought it into the warm room it became perfectly active, 
and was as ready to jump about as any other member of its 
species. 
“ I put this mouse into a little tin box with holes in the cover, 
and took him with me in my journeyings, taking care to put in the 
box a portion of an ear of corn and pieces of paper. It ate the 
corn by gnawing from the outside of the kernel, and it gnawed the 
paper into bits with which it made a nest. On the fourth day 
after its capture I gave it water which it seemed to relish. On the 
23d of January, I took it with me to Elgin, Illinois, nearly three 
hundred miles farther north than the region where I found the 
specimen. The weather was intensely cold. Taking the mouse 
from the box, I placed it on a newspaper on a table, and covered 
it with a large glass bell, lifting the edge of the glass so as to admit 
