ad seized him there, and had
been tugging away at him to drag him out of the trap, causing the
rattling I had heard. No other explanation seems probable.

The least mammal in our woods is the little mouse-like shrew, scarcely
more than three inches long, tail and all. And it is the shyest and
least known. One gets a glimpse of it only at rare intervals, while
sitting or standing motionless in the woods. There is a slight rustle
under the leaves, and you may see a tiny form dart across a little
opening in the leafy carpet. Its one dread seems to be exposure to the
light. If it were watched and waited for by a hundred enemies, it could
hardly be more hurried and cautious in its movements. And when once
captured and fairly exposed to the light, it soon dies, probably of
fright. One night in midsummer, when I was camping in the woods, one of
them got into an empty tin pail and was dead in the morning. A teacher
caught one in a delusion trap, and attempted to take it to her school,
to show her children, but it was dead when she got there. In winter it
makes little tunnels under the snow in the woods, now and then coming to
the surface, and, after a few jumps, diving under the snow again. Its
tracks are like the most delicate stitching. I have never found its nest
or seen its young. Like all the shrews, it lives mainly upon worms and
insects.

The track of one of our native mice we do not see upon the snow,--that
of the jumping mouse. So far as I know, it is the only one of our mice
that hibernates. It is much more rare than its cousin the deer mouse, or
white-footed mouse, and I have never known it to be found in barns or
dwellings. I think I have heard it called the kangaroo mouse, because of
its form and its manner of running, which is in long leaps. Its fore
legs are small and short, and its hind legs long and strong. It bounds
along, leaping two or more feet at a time. I used to see it when a boy,
but have not met with one for many years.

[Illustration: JUMPING MOUSE]

One summer, a boy who lives in Dutchess County, across the Hudson from
my house, caught four of these mice in a wire trap, two males and two
females. The boy said that when he picked up the trap the two males fell
dead, from fright he thought. One of the females died in October, but
the other lived and began hibernating early in November. He took it to
his teacher in New York, who kept it through the winter. She made a
pocket for it in a woolen so