The natural history of Selborne / By the late Rev. Gilbert White. With additions by Sir William Jardine.
- Gilbert White
- Date:
- 1836
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The natural history of Selborne / By the late Rev. Gilbert White. With additions by Sir William Jardine. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![to be in corn ricks, into which they are carried at harvest. A neighbour housed an oat rick lately, under the thatch of which were assembled near a hundred, most of which were taken; and some I saw. I measured them, and found that, from nose to tail, they were just two inches and a quarter, and their tails just two inches long. Two of them, in a scale, weighed down just one copper halfpenny, which is about the third of an ounce avoirdupois; so that I suppose they are the smallest quadrupeds in this island. A full- grown mus medius domesticus weighs, I find, one ounce, lumping weight, which is more than six times as much as the mouse above, and measures from nose to rump four inches and a quarter, and the same in its tail. We have had a very severe frost and deep snow this month [Jan. 1768]. My thermometer was one day fourteen degrees and a half below the freezing point, within doors. The tender evergreens were injured pretty much. the day-time, yet I never once observed it employed in removing the grass. On opening its nest about the latter end of October, 1804, I remarked that there were among the grass and wool at the bottom about forty grains of maize. These appeared to have been arranged with some care and regularity, and every grain had the corcule, or growing part, eaten out, the lobes only being left. This seemed so much like an operation induced by the instinctive propensity that some quadrupeds are endowed with for storing up food for support during the winter months, that I soon afterwards put info the cage about a hundred additional grains of maize. These were all in a short time carried away; and ona second examination, I found them stored up in the manner of the former. But though the animal was well supplied with other food, and particularly with bread, which it seemed very fond of, and although it continued perfectly active through the whole winter, on examining its nest a third time, about the end of November, I observed that the food in its repository was all consumed, except about half a dozen grains.” —W. J.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33027766_0071.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
