What joy in dreaming ease to lie
Amid a field new shorn,

And see all round on sun-lit slope,
The piled-up stacks of corn,
And send the fancy wandering o'er
All pleasant harvest-fields of yore.

I feel the day; I see the field;
The quivering of the leaves;
And good old Jacob, and his house
Binding the yellow sheaves;
And at the very hour I seem
To be with Joseph in his dream.

I see the fields of Bethlehem,
And reapers many a one,
Bending with their sickles' stroke,
And Boaz looking on;
And Ruth, the Moabitess fair,
Among the gleaners stooping there.

Again, I see a little child,

His mother's sole delight; God's living gift of love unto

The kind, good Shunamite ;

To mortal pangs I see him yield,

And the lad bears him from the field.

The sun-bathed quiet of the hills,
The fields of Galilee,

That eighteen hundred years' agone,
Were full of corn, I see;

way

And the dear Saviour take his
'Mid ripe ears on the sabbath-day.

O golden fields of bending corn,
How beautiful they seem!-
The reaper-folk, the piled-up sheaves,
To me are like a dream;

The sunshine and the very air

Seem of old time, and take me there!

MARY HOWITT.

THE HARVEST MOON.

395

THE HARVEST MOON.

One of the most beautiful features of this season is the HARVEST MOON. For several successive nights the moon rises at the same hour, soon after sunset, and is remarkable for its apparent size, and for the splendour of its colour. Every lover of nature, who has the means of so doing, should now hasten forth to enjoy the spectacle of the evening, the gorgeous show which nature, so rich and so munificent, prepares for those who have eyes to see, and hearts to feel her beauty and her greatness. Scarcely will the sun have sunk in the west, frequently amid a pomp of clouds in which the most gorgeous and intense colouring is displayed, when on the opposite side of the heavens, ascends majestically the crimson disc of the moon, not less glorious than the sun, and worthy to be his successor. Slowly ascends she, apparently of immense size, a crimson globe of fire, taking as it were possession of the whole ethereal field. To add to this splendid effect, or to give it perhaps a more pictorial charm, let the spectator place himself so that the moon shall rise above the crown of a solitary hill or behind a scattered group of trees, and no finer picture can be presented to him. Nature is a great artist, her pictures are for ever displayed around us, and one of the most striking ones is that of the ascending Harvest Moon.

Occasionally during harvest that pretty and curious little animal, the harvest mouse is met with. Its nest, of which we give a cut, is of a very singular construction; it is usually suspended on some growing vegetable, a thistle or beanstalk, or some adjoining stems of wheat, with which it rocks and waves in the wind; but to prevent the young from being dislodged by any violent agitation of the plant, the parent closes up the entrance so uniformly with her whole fabric, that it is difficult to find it. The nest is so completely and firmly interwoven, that it may be rolled and tossed about as a ball, and still remain uninjured.

In his "Memoirs of British Quadrupeds," the Rev. W. Bingley gives the following interesting account of one of these little creatures, which he kept some time in his possession.

"About the middle of September," says he, "I had a female harvest mouse given me. It was put into a dormousecage immediately when caught, and a few days afterwards produced eight young ones. I entertained some hope that the little animal would have nursed them, and brought them.

up, but having been disturbed in her removal, about four miles from the county, she began to destroy them, and I took her from them. After they were removed, she became reconciled to her situation, and when there was no noise, would venture out of the hiding-place at the extremity of the cage, and climb about among the wires of the open part before me. In doing this, I remarked that her tail was prehensile, and that, to render her hold the more secure, she generally coiled the extremity of it round one of the wires. The toes of all the feet were particularly long and flexile, and she could grasp the wires very firmly with any of them. She frequently rested on her hind feet, somewhat in the manner of the jerboa, for the purpose of looking about her, and in this attitude could extend her body at such an angle

THE HARVEST MOUSE.

397

She was a beautiful little

as at first greatly surprised me. animal, and her various attitudes in cleaning her face, head, and body, with her paws, were peculiarly graceful and elegant. For a few days after I received this mouse, I neglected to give it any water; but when I afterwards put some into the cage, she lapped it with great eagerness. After lapping she always raised herself on her hind feet, and cleaned her head with her paws. She continued, even till the time of her death, exceedingly shy and timid, but whenever I put into the cage any favourite food, such as grains of wheat or maize, she would eat them before me. On the least noise or motion, however, she immediately ran off, with the grains in her mouth, to her hiding-place. One evening, as I was sitting at my writing-desk, and the animal was playing about in the open part of its cage, a large blue fly happened to buzz against the wires; the little creature, although at twice or thrice the distance of her own length from it, sprang along the wires with the greatest agility, and would certainly have seized it, had the space betwixt the wires been sufficiently wide to have admitted her teeth or paws to reach it. I was surprised at this occurrence, as I had been led to believe that the harvest mouse was merely a granivorous animal. I caught the fly, and made it buzz in my fingers against the wires. The mouse, though usually shy and timid, immediately came out of her hiding-place, and, running to the spot, seized and devoured it. From this time I fed her with insects whenever I could get them; and she always preferred them to every other kind of food that I offered her. When this mouse was first put into her cage, a piece of fine flannel was folded up into the dark part of it as a bed, and I put some grass and bran into the large open part. In the course of a few days all the grass was removed; and, on examining the cage, I found it very neatly arranged between the folds of the flannel, and rendered more soft by being mixed with the knap of the flannel, which the animal had torn off in considerable quantity for the purpose. The chief part of this operation must have taken place in the night; for although the mouse was generally awake and active during the daytime, 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 into the cage about a hundred additional grains of maize. These were all in a short time carried away, and on a 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."