October 31.] 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER, 
f>T ! 
by wholesale, and may either he saved till morning for 
the hungry ducks and fowls, or be otherwise dealt with 
by hot water, fresh slaked lime, or in any other way that 
the proprietor may think best. The quickest plan is at 
once, in the evening, to take about, with the lantern, a 
bucket of hot slaked lime, and dust their jackets then, 
although the next morning it has a rather ugly appear- 
| ance if they are not collected and buried at once ; a few 
j evenings strict attention to this plan will soon clear any 
locality of slugs; and we find this also the easiest and 
most effectual system that we could ever discover, if any 
troublesome customers find their way into a cucumber 
or melon frame or pit, or into any hothouse or other 
structure; for a spoonful of fresh grains placed as we 
recommend will very early attract their attention. 
Mice, too, as the weather becomes wintry and cold, 
after their summer’s excursion in the woods and fields, 
will often return for shelter at this season to the garden, 
particularly if old dry banks form any part of the boun¬ 
daries, and any sheds, &c., are contiguous. Now, there 
being several varieties of mice troublesome and destruc¬ 
tive in various ways to the gardener, it may be as well at 
the present time to point out a little of their natural 
habits, and to state the simplest method we have found 
successful for destroying them. The dark coloured House- 
mouse is well known to every one, being occasionally an 
inhabitant of every old cottage, house, and shed, both in 
village and in town, and which not only nibbles its way 
into the bakehouse, pantry, larder, and every other place,, 
but into the garden also, attacking the seed-drawers, &c. 
The dry seed of peas, beans, radish, lettuce, endive, spi¬ 
nach, cucumber, melon, and, indeed, almost every kind of 
vegetable, as well as many kind of flower-seeds whilst in 
a dry state, will this little pest eat and destroy. It may 
be caught with toasted cheese in many kinds of traps, 
but the easiest way to clear a place of them at once is to 
place away out of their reach every other kind of food, and 
then feeding them for a couple of nights with a little 
toasted cheese, by laying it near their haunts, and on 
the third night roll the bait of toasted cheese whilst 
warm in a sufficient quantity of arsenic, and lay it in 
the place where they have previously been fed; this is 
the most effectual and easy way of ridding premises at 
once that we have ever discovered. 
The greatest enemy in the mouse way to out-of-doors 
gardening, and the one to which we most especially beg 
to call attention at this season, is a long, light coloured, 
brown mouse, with a white belly, large eyes, long tail, 
and uncommonly active on its feet when routed out of 
its haunts. It is fond of many varieties of vegetable 
and flower-seeds in their fresh state whilst saving, and 
will hoard up large quantities of such varieties as come 
in its way; indeed, they seem at times to take it on 
themselves to clear every seed of the flower-garden, in 
the way of dahlia, aster, marigold, zinia, salvia, ver- 
bena, and many others, besides hoarding away batches 
! of filberts, walnuts, beechnuts, chestnuts, cherry and 
| laurel stones, and a number of other kinds of seeds and 
I fruit stones. Sometimes, too, when peas, beans, radish, 
and other seeds have been sown and germinated, and 
j have made a shoot from a quarter of an inch to an inch 
| in length, these pests will entirely clear the ground, 
j unless stopped in their nefarious depredations in due time. 
! We have seen the shoots from whole rows of beans and 
j peas thus cleared in a short time, and every radish seed 
inside a frame, or small bed of early sown, or on warm 
I borders when covered with litter, carefully scratched out 
and destroyed. These mice care but little for either 
toasted cheese or dry seeds as baits, but any number 
may easily be caught, and any premises may soon be 
cleared by the following simple contrivance :—Put a 
few peas into a flower-pot or pan, and place a little moist 
earth over them, or put them into a pan with a little 
| water, and if required in haste, place them inside of a 
heated frame, or in the chimney corner, and apply tepid 
water, which treatment will soon cause them to grow 
enough for baits ; get a farthing's-worth of strong white- 
brown thread and a needle, cut the thread into long 
lengths, threading on the peas so as to allow two only 
to every nine or ten inches of thread, which should be 
so divided when cut to the above length, tie a knot at 
each end of the thread, cut a handful of small raspberry 
canes, currant cuttings, or any kind of convenient shoots, | 
which should also be cut into lengths of ten inches or a j 
foot, and a slit made at one end of the thread to be ; 
drawn into the slitted sticks, the knot preventing its j 
drawing out; the stakes are to be placed into the 
ground in various places all over the garden. The 
distance of the thread from the earth’s surface should be 
about three inches, and the two peas should be divided 
about half an inch apart, to afford room for the mouse j 
to thrust its jaws between so as to nibble the thread 
assunder, which it generally does without first touching 
the bait; a brick being placed over the bait, and resting 
on the thread, brings it to about two and a half inches 
from the ground, which seems about a convenient height 
for taking the mouse easily and with certainty. A boy 
will set at least a score of such simple inexpensive mouse- , 
traps out of doors; and at this season, if trapping is 
strictly attended to, the mice may all be cleared before 
the peas and beans, &c., are sown. If traps are set 
on very loose soft ground, just slap the brick down hard 
so as to have a surface firm enough to secure the mouse, 
for we have known them scratch their way out from 
traps tilted on soft rough cloddy ground. 
Another troublesome kind of mouse is a rough, 
shaggy, dark brown, bull-headed, short-tailed vermin. 
This fellow seems most at home in meadows, and long 
rough grass plantations; and feeds a good deal on green 
vegetables, roots, &c. This is a most destructive, trouble¬ 
some fellow to the gardening fraternity in various ways. 
We have known them in the winter months get into the 
stored endive and lettuce, eating through and destroying 
the heart of almost every plant in a very short time. 
These mice burrow and form runs in all directions ; 
we have known them get into temporary pits where 
thousands of flower-garden plants have been stored, and 
gnaw through the whole, from end to end, and from side 
to side; they seem to delight in forming new roads, and 
that, too, very often. We have known them find their 
way into a forced asparagus-bed, and, in one night, 
nibble off the point of almost every shoot above ground; 
and scratch out those about coming up. We have 
known them in districts where fig-trees are obliged to 
be bandaged, or otherwise protected in winter, to take 
possession very quietly, without making much outward 
appearance, and nibble off the whole of the bark from 
the base of the trees ; indeed, we have seen fine trees 
stripped of their bark nearly all over by the time they 
were uncovered in spring, and as white as basket- 
makers’ rods, and the trees killed to the ground; this we 
have seen to be the case with thousands of young ash, 
hollies, and many other plants. Only a short distance 
from where we are now writing, a holly hedge, three 
years ago, had, for a considerable distance, the base of 
every shoot and stem peeled off to the height of two or 
three feet; and when summer arrived it looked as if it 
had been fired—all brown and scorched up; indeed, the 
havoc we have known this little depredator make, in 
various ways, would astonish those who have not had 
the opportunity of observing it. I have known them 
find their way into early cucumber and melon pits and 
frames, and nibble off every blossom and fruit; and, 
not satisfied with this, would gnaw off all the plants at 
the base, and numberless tricks of the like kind, to 
which many can bear testimony as well as myself. 
Now, the catching of these, in an easy simple manner, 
was what we wished to discover, but we found it a diffi- 
