i6 
NATURE NOTES 
with the egg as before mentioneci, and two others endeavouring to raise him up 
and away. ... I have written this to you as I feel somewhat incompetent to 
persuade myself to write to the Editor. But I strictly avow that what I have told 
you is the sincere truth as I had it related to me by my then next-door neighbour, 
and I could not but believe him, as he told it in such a way as the most sceptic 
could not detect in him any motive whatever for telling it untruthfully or 
boastfully.” 
December, 1900. Edmund Tho.s. Daubeny. 
A Friendly Mouse. — Seeing Mr. Matheson’s notes this month (p. 230), I 
am reminded of a somewhat similar experience I had a few years ago. I had 
gone to old fishing quarters on Dartmoor, and the sitting room I usually occupied 
being taken by other lodgers 1 was shown into another apartment. After supper 
a mouse made his appearance on a large oak chest which served as a sideboard, 
and was busy picking up crumbs. He seemed to be very friendly, and took no 
notice of my movements beyond watching me with his bright eyes, so I thought I 
would see how tame he really was. Remembering how fond animals are of being 
scratched at the back of the head or behind the ear, I slipped my hand quietly 
along behind a book and tried this on with my little companion. He did not 
stir, but, to my surprise, turned round and nipped my finger. This caused me to 
withdraw my hand, and I was thinking what move I should next make, when the 
door opened and the landlady made her appearance, to have the usual evening 
“Tell,” as it is called in Devonshire. I begged her to keep quiet on account 
of the mouse, who had retired at her approach, but she said she could not bear 
such creatures, for they frightened her, and she would go and get “ Bundle,” the 
cat. To my joy “ Bundle” could not be found, but I fear he was put in puistiit 
after I had gone to bed, for I never saw the mouse again. My reflections then 
were that I possessed a sympathy or fellow feeling for wild creatures, and that my 
landlady did not, and I also thought, once more, what an odd thing it was that 
any human being should be frightened by a mouse ! 
Les Coloiidalles, Montreux, Switzerland, Giles A. Daubeny. 
December 10, 1900. 
Cat and Mole. — While standing outside the front door of a house in Jersey, 
at which I was once staying, I observed the cat belonging to the house walk from 
under the bushes of a side bed with a mole in her mouth. On reaching the centre 
of the lawn she put down the mole and began to play with it, as cats usually do 
with a mouse. Something, however, attracted her attention in another direction, 
and she turned her head round. To attempt to crawl away would have been 
useless on the mole’s part, but, with little motion of its body it began to bury 
itself through the grass and earth, and in a remarkably short space of time had 
disappeared altogether, so that when puss again looked round the only trace of 
her plaything was a slight motion of the earth just above the spot at which it had 
disappeared. This she quickly observed and at once made efforts to regain it, 
but was too late. It was a strange, as well as an amusing sight, and I should 
think a very rare one. It should be borne in mind that it was not the soft earth 
of a bed in which the mole so quickly buried itself, but the firm, trodden earth of 
a grassy lawn. 
C. E. C. 
Hedgehogs. — Is it true that hedgehogs suck eggs ? A year or two ago a 
stray hen laid some eggs among the rhubarb leaves in our kitchen garden. One 
of my children discovered it by the hen scuttling out from among the leaves as 
she passed : she went to look and found four eggs which the hen had just left 
with a hedgehog lying on them. 
I was absent from home at the time, but when I returned next day she said 
to me, “ Do let us go and see if the hedgehog is still on the eggs,” and the same 
thing took place : the hen rushed off the eggs, and there was one more laid, and 
the hedgehog lying on the top of them, and they were all warm and perfectly 
sound. The hen must have been sitting on the hedgehog, and that on the eggs, and 
another egg had been laid since the day before, which looked as if the hen and 
hedgehog were friendly. Did he go there for warmth, or had he an eye to a good 
meal when the “sitting” was complete ? The hen was evidently not afraid of 
her spiny companion. I was sorry afterwards that I had not left him to see what 
