FINGERS AND TOES. 
1 03 
or rat has any use? They come out when we are in 
our beds and run about and eat little scraps, and try to 
keep out of the way of owls and cats, and I hope they 
do not succeed. Now and then one comes through a 
window by mistake, and perhaps falls into the bath tub, 
and I save it from drowning, and so its path crosses mine 
for the first time. By such accidents I have come to know 
the Spiny Mouse, but of its ways I know nothing. 
About another mouse, or rat, I am in the opposite 
position : I know its ways, but I never saw itself. It 
makes its burrow in the forest, on some hill-side, turn- 
ing out prodigious quantities of earth and pebbles. 
When it retires for the day it stops up the entrance 
with stones jambed hard against each other, so that 
no snake or other enemy can get in. One glance at 
its arrangements shows that it must be a rat of no 
ordinary talent and force of character, not to mention 
mere physical strength. So I determined one day to 
make its acquaintance. 
I took with me two men and a pickaxe, and went to 
a small hamlet of five or six dwellings, which was not 
far from my tent. At the door of one there was not less 
than half a good cartload of earth, and I concluded that 
