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A SINGING MOUSE. Within the last year I have seen several items in the papers, to the effect that "singing mice" had been caught in different parts of the country, and as the existence of such musicians seems to excite interest, I propose to give an account of one that lived with us about two years ago.

It was in September, 1866, at Newburgh, N. Y., I had noticed in one of the rooms occupied by my family, for several evenings, a fine, chirping sound, so persistent and monotonous as to be annoying, and had supposed it to proceed from one of the small cicadæ that, at that season, had full possession of the shade trees that surrounded the house. Several times I endeavored to find the insect, but ineffectually, the noise seeming to come from different parts of the room, sometimes high in the wall, sometimes on the floor, and ceasing altogether while I was endeavoring to localize it, only to break out afresh the moment I resumed my seat and the room was quiet. This continued more or less for a week, without my being able to learn whence the sound proceeded. At last it invaded my bedroom, which adjoined the other, and for an hour or two together, on one particular night, made sleep impossible. It chanced next mornning as I was dressing, the same note issued from an enclosed verandah, the doors of which were open. It struck me as odd that an insect, such as I supposed the musician to be, should sing by daylight. Upon the floor of the verandah were several trunks, and I traced the sound from one to another, till, on lifting gently the lower edge of the canvas cover of one of them, I saw the tail of a mouse protruding. He scampered away to another hiding place, from which forthwith the same notes came. I left the mouse in peace that day, but devised means to entrap him the following night. And sure enough, somewhere about midnight, I waked to hear the same continuous chirping, and presently heard the click of the trap. In the morning the children were greatly excited, and soon found an old dormouse cage, brought from London years ago, made like a squirrel cage with wheel and sleeping box, but all on a scale suitable for mice or dormice, which are alike feeble folks. The captive seemed pleased with his quarters, and soon manifested his content at the quality and regularity of his rations, by singing his unvarying tune at all hours. He warbled after the manner of a minute bird, the throat swelling and vibrating, the mouth closed or nearly so, and the lips in incessant rapid motion, like those of a rabbit. There was nothing like the imitation of any particular bird. We might possibly have fancied otherwise if there had ever been a canary in the house. Nor was there anything that could strictly be called a song. The sound was thin, sharp, but slightly varied, and altogether more like that emitted by an insect. This mouse soon became very tame and familiar with the presence of any of the family. After a few days he became much less restless than at first, was visibly getting fat and lazy, would not take a run in the wheel unless driven to it, and spent a good part of the day sleeping in his little room. In this he hoarded his food in such quantity as to seem to the children

uncomfortable, and therefore he occasionally had to be ejected while his bedding was changed and all made clean. At this treatment he would manifest his displeasure by flying across the cage into the wheel, which he would make spin, emitting all the while his peculiar note with great shrillness and rapidity. And when admitted again after the house clearing, he would be in a state of exasperation, scolding incessantly while busy rearranging things to suit his own mouse ideas. Several times he escaped from the cage, but was as often retaken, as his noise always betrayed him, until at last, after he had been with us six weeks, he escaped once too often and we saw him no more. We supposed he had found his way through the open door into the garden. This mouse was not the common house-mouse, but of a species which frequents barns or lives in the fields, and which was common in our own barn. It was of a light brown, with a whitish belly. Its nose was sharper than that of the house-mouse. On mentioning the subject to a friend, I was told that, some years ago, a house in Catskill, N. Y., was greatly infested with "singing mice," and that it was well known and talked of in the village. We know so little of the habits of the small nocturnal animals, that it may be possible that these field-mice possess more or less of the musical faculty. The notes of the subject of this paper would pass for the chirping of a cricket, or small grasshopper if heard in the open air, or even in a barn. If heard in a room they would have a certain distinctness, but could not properly be likened to anything so decided and modulated as the song of a bird.

I have looked in vain for any intelligent account of the habits of our field-mice in works of Natural History. In Jesse's "Country Life," London, page 350, is mentioned as follows: "I have been twice to hear the singing mouse. Its song is plaintive, sweet and continuous, and evidently proceeds from the throat. The notes are those of a canary bird, and on questioning the man, I found that one of these birds had been kept in the room in which the mouse was trapped?"-W. H. EDWARDS.

NATURAL SELECTION, A MODERN INSTANCE. I am a frequenter of the Adirondacks, having hunted there for twenty-one years. The common American Deer (Cervus Virginianus) abounds there. About fourteen years ago, as nearly as I can remember, I first began to hear of "Spikehorn Bucks." The stories about them multiplied, and they evidently became more and more common from year to year. About five years ago I shot one of these animals, a large buck with spike-horns, on Louis Lake. In September, 1867, I shot another, a three years old buck with spike-horns, on Cedar Lakes. These Spike-horn Bucks are now frequently shot in all that portion of the Adirondacks south of Raquette Lake. I presume the same is true north of Raquette Lake, but of this latter region I cannot speak from personal observation, having visited it only

once.

The spike-horn differs greatly from the common antler of the C. Virginianus. It consists of a single spike, more slender than the antler, and

scarcely half so long, projecting forward from the brow, and terminating in a very sharp point. It gives a considerable advantage to its possessor over the common buck. Besides enabling him to run more swiftly through the thick woods and underbrush (every hunter knows that does and yearling bucks run much more rapidly than the large bucks when armed with their cumbrous antlers), the spike-horn is a more effective weapon than the common antler. With this advantage the Spike-horn Bucks are gaining upon the common bucks, and may, in time, entirely supercede them in the Adirondacks. Undoubtedly the first Spike-horn Buck was merely an accidental freak of nature. But his spike-horns gave him an advantage, and enabled him to propagate his peculiarity. His descendants, having a like advantage, have propagated the peculiarity in a constantly increasing ratio, till they are slowly crowding the Antlered Deer from the region they inhabit.

Suppose this had begun several hundred years ago, and the process had been completed before the first white man penetrated the wilds of northern New York, the first naturalist visiting the region would have found of deer, besides the Moose and Caribou, only the Spike-horn. Would he have hesitated to have pronounced it a distinct species, and to have named it as such? And would not naturalists everywhere have followed him? Yet the Spike-horn Buck is but an accidental variety of the C. Virginianus. Is it probable that the Black-tailed Deer is a more distinct species? How many changes as great as that from the common Deer to the Spikehorn Buck would be necessary in order to produce an animal as different as the Elk, or even the Moose?- ADIRONDACK.

"LILIES OF THE ROCKS."- An article in the August number of the NATURALIST entitled "The Lilies of the Fields, of the Rocks and of the Clouds," contains statements which show the author to have misconceived some very plain zoölogical facts. I allude to his assuming that the hexagonal form of the "microscopic blocks" which constitute a layer of the retina of the eye; and the similar outline of plates of fossil crinoids, are facts which illustrate a natural law similar to that which governs the crystalization of snow-flakes and of certain mineral substances, and which he claims the ability to explain by a new theory of his own.

With no reference to his theory, and no desire to criticise the author unjustly, I merely wish to state that zoologists have long had what is to them a sufficient explanation of the cause of the forms assumed by those parts of the "animal frame" referred to by him in the article just mentioned. They believe that the normal form of those microscopic bodies which enter into the structure of the retina of the eye is spherical, and that they receive their hexagonal outline by impinging against each other in their crowded condition. So also the plates of all plated Radiates receive their polygonal outlines from the same cause. Their normal outline is circular and undivided, evidence of which may be seen in the inner circular lines upon the very figures of a plate of Archæocidaris which he reproduces from Hall, and which by the way is not a crinoid. These AMER. NATURALIST, VOL. III.

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plates commence calcification within the skin of the young Radiate as circular grains, and increase at their periphery until they impinge against contiguous plates; the number of angles they may have when fully grown being determined by the number of other plates they impinge against. The plate he figures happens to have six, but many others upon the same individual had a different number and their angles were often unequal in the same plate. The hexagonal outline of the microscopic bodies in the retina is uniform in all because they are uniform in size and consistence. The plates of Radiates are not uniform because their points of calcification are usually located at unequal distances. By this it will be seen that the number of angles any plate receives is essentially accidental and bears no relation whatever to the fundamental plan upon which the animal is constructed, which is that of five rays and not six, the number necessary to make it harmonize with the crystalline structure of snow-flakes, etc. - ZOOLOGICUS.

SAGACITY OF THE PURPLE MARTIN. -In the spring of 1868, a young friend of mine in this city desiring to obtain eggs of the Purple Martin, constructed a nesting-box and hung it out of the window. This box had

a hole on the outside for the entrance of the birds, and a hole on the inside through which to reach the hand and remove the eggs. The birds at once appropriated the box, and he succeeded in procuring specimens of the eggs.

This spring (1869) the birds again built in the box, and having secured his eggs, my friend concluded to preserve a specimen of the birds, He reached through the back hole in the box and seized one of the birds, and killed and mounted it. The mate was absent for a day or two, when it returned with a companion, and both birds built a mud wall, shutting up the back hole into the box from which a bird had been taken, and then went on and raised a brood of young. -D. D. HUGHES.

THE CAPTURE OF THE CENTRONYX BAIRDII AT IPSWICH.-On Dec. 4th, 1868, I shot a sparrow that was new to me, on the sandhills at Ipswich. Through the kindness of Prof. S. F. Baird, of the Smithsonian Institution, to whom I sent it for comparison with the only extant specimen of the Centronyx Bairdii (which is owned by him), it has been proved identical with that collected by Audubon in 1843, on the banks of the Yellowstone River, in the far West.

My specimen differs somewhat in size and general coloration from Prof. Baird's. A detailed description, and the comparative measurements of the two specimens, will be given in a work about to be published, entitled "A Guide to Naturalists in collecting and preserving objects of Natural History," which will also contain a complete list of the birds of Eastern Massachusetts, with critical notes and remarks relative to the. localities in which some of the rarer species occur. A life-sized engraving of the Centronyx captured at Ipswich will also be given.

I was much interested in a discovery that I made relative to the length

of the claws of the Mud-turtle (Chrysemys picta Gray) differing in the sexes. I have examined a large number and found in every case that the claws of the males on the front feet are nearly twice as long as those of the female. If we take into consideration the manner in which these animals copulate the reason of this peculiar elongation of the claws of the male is obvious.-C. J. MAYNARD.

PROLIFIC SNAKES. - Various accounts of prolific snakes, from Lancaster County, have come to me during the present season. On the 6th of August a female snake, Heterodon platyrhinus, commonly known in this locality as the "Blower," or "Blowing Viper," was killed in Martic Township. From a wound in her side, over one hundred young snakes, from six to eight inches in length, came forth, all very active, all blowing, and flattening their bodies, as is common in the adult individuals of this species. Sixty-three of these young snakes were brought to me in a bottle of alcohol, thirteen were too much lacerated to make good specimens, and the remainder made their escape before they could be secured. We know this species to be oviparous. The question now arises again, "Do female snakes, in certain contingencies, swallow their young?" as has so often been confidently asserted, and as often and as strenuously denied. Mr. Lehman, an intelligent farmer, who was present at the killing, and who brought me the specimens, says that they seemed to issue from an abdominal sack, which was ruptured in the act of killing. An opinion obtains in some quarters, that the same species, under certain circumstances, may be either oviparous or viviparous, or "ovoviviparous," as it is sometimes called. S. S. RATHVON, Lancaster, Pa.

THE HALIOTIS OR PEARLY EAR SHELL.-In an article, with the above title, in the July number of the NATURALIST, referring to the geographical distribution of the Haliotides, I have stated as a remarkable fact, that although several species are found upon the West coast of North America, not a single species had been found upon the East coast of either North or South America. In the latter part of August, upon the occasion of a brief visit to the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, I was kindly shown by Count Portales, among other material, a specimen of Haliotis (some one and one-half inches long) dredged, living, by him in the Gulf Stream between Florida and Cuba; this is the first instance of the occurrence of the Haliotis upon the Eastern side of the American Continents.-R. E. C. STEARNS.

Cow DEVOURING THE PLACENTA. — In the June number of the NATURALIST, in the Scandinavian compte rendu, some investigations in regard to animals devouring their after-birth are referred to as novel and interesting. If this be the case, I suppose individual testimony to the same effect may be worth something, and I write to say that I once knew a cow to devour her after-birth, at least so much of it as she was permitted to eat. I have also known cats to go a step farther, and devour the newborn litter. - P.