, 1877-07-20
The Homes of Mice.

The field mice make snug beds in old
stumps, under logs, inside stacks of corn
and bundles of straw; dig out galleries
below the grass roots; occupy the aban.
doned nests of birds and the holes mada
by other animalsi and even weave nests
of their own in weeds and bushes. Tbev
live well in captivity, and you can easiIv
see them at workif you supply materials
In tearing down old buildings the car
penters often find between the walls a
lot of pieces of paper, bits of cloth.
sticks, fur, and such. stuff, forming a
great bale, and know that it was once
the home of house-mouse. You have
heard anecdotes of how a shop-keener
missed small pieces of money from his
till, and suspected his clerk of taking il.
how the clerk was poor boy who was
supporting a widowed mother, or a sister
at school, and the kind-hearted sbon-
keeper shut his eyes to his suspicious.
and waited for more and more proof be-
fore being convinced that his young
clerk was the thief; but, as the money
kept disappearing, how at last he ac-
cused the clerk of taking it. Then the
story tells how, in spite of the boys We
hement and fearful denial, a policeman
was called in to arrest him, and when
everything had been searched to no pur-
pose, and he was about being taken to
the police-statiOn, how, away back in a
corner was discovered a mouses nest
made of stolen pieces of ragged cur
rency - ten, twenty-five and tifty-cent
pieces. Then everybody was happy, and
the story ended with capital moral!
More than one such stolen house they
have really built, and sometimes their
work has destroyed half hundred dol
lars, and caused no end of heartaches.
Their little teeth are not to be dispised,
assure you. 1 believe one of the most
disastrous of those great floods which in
past years have swept over the fertile
plains of Holland was caused by mice
digging through the thick banks of earth,
called dykes, which had been piled up
to keep the sea back. In this case, of
course, the mice lost their lives by their
misdeeds, as well as the people, sharing
in the general catastrophe. They hardly
intended this; but
"The best-laid plans o. mice and men
Gang aft agley."
1t was by the gnawing of ridiculous
little mouse, you remember, that the
lion in the fable got free from the net in
which the king Of beasts found himself
caught.
Sometimes the house-mouseF goes out
of-doors to live, and forgets his civiliza-
ton; while, on the other hand, the
woodland species occasionally come in
doors and grow tame. At the fur-trad-
ing posts about Hudson Bay, wild mice
live in the traders houses.
All mice are full of curiosity. They
poke their noses into all sorts of places
where there is prospect of something
to eat, and often meet the fate which
ought to be the end of all poking of
noses into other peoples affairs-they
get caught. remember one such case
which Mr.. Frank Buckland has related.
When oysters are left out of water for
any length Of time, especially in hot
weather, they always open their shells
little way, probably seeking drink of
water. A mouse hunting about for food
found such an oyster in the larder, and
put his head in to nibble at the oysters
beard; instantly the bivalve shut his
shells, and held them together so tightly
by his strong muscles, that the poor
mouse could not pull his head out, and
so died of suffocation. Other similar
cases have been knoWn.-Ernest Inger-
soil, in st. Nicholas.