applies to the nest of the White-bellied Field Mouse, and White, of Selborne, notices the same fact with reference to the harvestmouse. How the young are suckled seems marvellous, unless the conjecture be correct that the female opens a fresh aperture in the nest each time she visits her young, and closes it again when she departs.

"The parents show considerable affection for their young. If a nest be exposed by the mower they do not desert it, but on the contrary endeavour to conceal it from observation as well as they can, by drawing round it the neighbouring grasses and plants."

The same writer remarks that he has several times caught the Short-tailed Field Mouse in the hedges while "bat-fowling" at night for small birds. He has also found that when the Mouse eats hips, it nibbles off one end and extracts the seeds, rejecting the husks as uneatable. Man, however, acts in just the reverse manner, rejecting the seeds with their cottony envelopes, and eating the sweet husk, or sometimes boiling it up with sugar and making it into a conserve.

The cherry-stones are mostly obtained through the agency of blackbirds, thrushes, and other feathered fruit lovers. These birds pluck the cherries, often leaving the stones adhering slightly to the stalks, or dropping them on the ground. In the fomer case the stones are sure to be flung down when the legitimate owner gathers the fruit, so that the Mouse who is fortunate enough to live in a cherry-growing district is sure of a winter stock of food. Several hundred cherry-stones are sometimes placed in a single storehouse, affording sustenance to several mice.

The animal eats them in a peculiar manner. Instead of splitting them open by using the chisel-edged teeth or wedges, after the manner of schoolboys opening nuts and peach-stones with their pocket-knives, the Mouse nibbles off one end of the stone so as to make a little hole, and through this small aperture it contrives to extract the solid kernel.

The LONG-TAILED FIELD MOUSE or WOOD MOUSE (Mus sylvaticus) also makes a winter nest, in which it lives, but to which it does not absolutely confine itself, making several nests in the course of a season, and selecting such spots as appear to please its fancy at the time. Mr. Briggs remarks that he has known one of these mice to make a nest in three days.

One species of Field Mouse sometimes does good service to

mankind, through its habits of storing up its winter stock of provisions. Lately in the country about Odessa vast armies of mice were seen, and evidently did much damage. Not only did they eat the crops, but they swarmed into the houses in such numbers that traps could hardly be set fast enough, twenty or thirty being often taken in a single day.

Hurtful though they were in some senses, they nevertheless had their uses. The country is liable to the attacks of locusts, which in that year happened to be particularly numerous. These destructive insects, as is the case with many of their order, lay their eggs enclosed in capsules, something like the well-known egg-cases of our too common cockroach. The mice were very fond of the egg-capsules, and not only devoured them as part of their daily food, but carried them away, laid them up in their treasuries for a winter store, thus thinning the locust armies far more effectually than man could have done.

WE now come to the COMMON MOUSE of our houses (Mus musculus).

This little animal is a notable house-builder, making nests out of various materials, and placing them in various situations. There seems to be hardly any place in which a Mouse will not establish itself, and scarcely any materials of which it will not make its nest. Hay, leaves, straw, bitten into suitable lengths, roots, and dried herbage, are the usual materials employed by this animal when it is in the country.

When it becomes a town mouse and lives in houses, it accommodates itself to circumstances, and is never in want of a situation for a nest or materials wherewithal to make a comfortable house. It will use up old rags, tow, bits of rejected cord, paper, and any such materials as can be found straggling about a house; and if it can find no fragments, it helps itself very unceremoniously to, and cuts to pieces, books, newspapers, curtains, or garments.

Many instances of remarkable Mouse nests are recorded, among which the following are worthy of mention.

As is usual, at the end of autumn, a number of flower-pots had been set aside in a shed, in waiting for the coming spring. Towards the middle of winter, the shed was cleared out, and the flower-pots removed. While carrying them out of the shed

the owner was rather surprised to find a round hole in the mould, and therefore examined it more closely. In the hole was seen, not a plant, but the tail of a mouse, which leaped from the pot as soon as it was set down. Presently another mouse followed from the same aperture, showing that a nest lay beneath the soil. On removing the earth, a neat and comfortable nest was found, made chiefly of straw and paper, the entrance to which was the hole through which the inmates had fled.

The most curious point in connexion with this nest was, that although the earth in the pot seemed to be intact except for the round hole, which might have been made by a stick, none was found within it. The ingenious little architects had been clever enough to scoop out the whole of the earth and to carry it away, so as to form a cavity for the reception of their nest. They did not completely empty the pot, as if knowing by instinct that their habitation would be betrayed. Accordingly, they allowed a slight covering of earth to remain upon their nest, and had laboriously carried out the whole of the mould through the little aperture which has been mentioned. The flower-pot was placed on a shelf in the shed, and the earth was quite hard, so that in the process of excavation there was little danger that it would fall upon the architects.

Another nest was discovered in rather an ingenious position. A bird had built a nest upon a shrub in a garden, and, as is usual in such cases, had placed its home near the ground. A Mouse of original genius saw the nest, and perceived its value. Accordingly, she built her own nest immediately below that of the bird, so that she and her young were sheltered as by a roof. So closely had she fixed her habitation, that, as her young ran in and out of their home, their bodies pressed against the floor of the bird's nest above them. No less than six young were discovered in this ingenious nest.

Another very remarkable nest of the Common Mouse has been chronicled in the same journal to which reference has repeatedly been made. "Early in March we set a hen; and, as her nest was a basket, a sack was placed under and around it, so as to keep in the heat. When the hen was set, she was in good feather, wearing an ample tail, according to her kind (the Brahma); but as the three weeks went on, her tail seemed much broken, assumed a dilapidated appearance, and finally became a mere

stump. This excited notice and surprise, as there was nothing near her against which she was likely to spoil her tail.

"When the chickens were hatched, and they and their mother were taken to a fresh nest, and the old one removed, it was found that a Mouse had constructed a beautiful nest under the basket. The body of the nest was made of tow scraped from the sack, and chopped or gnawed hay from the hen's nest; while the lining was made of the feathers of her tail, which had evidently been removed, a small bit at a time, as wanted, until all the feathers were reduced to stumps, showing marks of the Mouse's teeth. We should have liked to have heard the hen's remarks on the transaction, when the Mouse was nibbling her tail."

In this case the Mouse improved on the conduct of her relative that built in the garden; for, by placing her nest in such a position, she not only secured the very best materials for her home, but enjoyed the advantage of the regular and high temperature which proceeded from the body of the sitting hen, and which was admirably adapted for the well-being of her young family.

The last example of a remarkable Mouse-nest is that which is figured in the accompanying illustration, and which was drawn from the actual object.

A number of empty bottles had been stowed away upon a shelf, and among them was found one which was tenanted by a Mouse. The little creature had considered that the bottle would afford a suitable home for her young, and had therefore conveyed into it a quantity of bedding, which she made into a nest. The bottle was filled with the nest, and the eccentric architect had taken the precaution to leave a round hole corresponding to the neck of the bottle. In this remarkable domicile the young were placed; and it is a fact worthy of notice, that no attempt had been made to shut out the light. Nothing would have been easier than to have formed the cavity at the underside, so that the soft materials of the nest would exclude the light; but the Mouse had simply formed a comfortable hollow for her young, and therein she had placed her offspring. It is therefore evident that the Mouse has no fear of light, but that it only chooses darkness as a means of safety for its young.

The rapidity with which the Mouse can make a nest is some

what surprising. One of the Cambridge journals mentioned, some few years ago, that in a farmer's house a loaf of newlybaked bread was placed upon a shelf, according to custom. Next day, a hole was observed in the loaf; and when it was cut open, a Mouse and her nest were discovered within, the latter having been made of paper. On examination, the material of the habitation was found to have been obtained from a copybook, which had been torn into shreds, and arranged into the form of a nest.

Within this curious home were nine young mice, pink, transparent, and newly born. Thus, in the space of thirty-six hours at the most, the loaf must have cooled, the interior been excavated, the copy-book found and cut into suitable pieces, the nest made, and the young brought into the world. Surely it is no wonder that mice are so plentiful, or that their many enemies fail to exterminate them.

A GENERAL account of the TERMITES, or WHITE ANTS as they are popularly but erroneously called, has been given under the head of Building Insects, and it has been mentioned that the female, or queen, has a cell distinct from the habitation of her subjects, and that she never leaves it until her death. In order