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The Harvest-Mouse

HIS elegant little manner as to entitle it to the name of a creature is so tiny true hanging nest. Generally, it is hung that, when full- to several stout grass-stems; sometimes grown, it weighs it is fastened to wheat-straws; and in one scarcely more than case mentioned it was suspended from the sixth of an the head of a thistle. ounce, whereas the It is a very beautiful structure, being ordinary mouse made of very narrow grasses, and woven weighs almost an entire so carefully as to form a hollow globe, ounce. Its color is a very rather larger than a base-ball, and very warm brown above, almost nearly as round. How the little creature amounting to chestnut, and contrives to form a hollow sphere with below it is pure white, the thin walls is still a problem. It is anline of demarcation being other problem how the young are placed strongly defined. in it, and another how they are fed. The Mice always make very walls are so thin that an object inside the comfortable nests for their nest can be easily seen from any part of young, gathering together the exterior; there is no opening what. great quantities of wool, rags, paper, hair, ever, and when the young are in the nest moss, feathers, and similar substances, they are packed so tightly that their and rolling them into a ball-like mass, in bodies press against the wall in every the middle of which the young are placed. direction. As there is no defined opening, The Harvest-mouse, however, surpasses and as the walls are so loosely woven, it all its neighbors in the beauty and ele- is probable that the mother is able to push gance of its home, which is not only con- her way between the meshes, and so to structed with remarkable neatness, but is arrange or feed her young. suspended above the ground in such a The position of the nest, which is