nature has bestowed upon many animals the faculty of observing the heavens, and of presaging the winds, rains, and tempests, each in its own peculiar way. it would be an endless labor to enumerate them all; just as much as it would be to point out the relation of each to man. for, in fact, they warn us of danger, not only by their fibres and their entrails, to which a large portion of mankind attach the greatest faith, but by other kinds of warnings as well. when a building is about to fall down, all the mice desert it, and the spiders with their webs are the first to drop. divination from birds has been made a science among the romans, and the college of its priests is looked upon as peculiarly sacred. in thrace, when all parts are covered with ice, the foxes are consulted, an animal which, in other respects, is baneful from its craftiness. it has been observed, that this animal applies its ear to the ice, for the purpose of testing its thickness; and the inhabitants will never cross frozen rivers and lakes until the foxes have passed over them and returned.

common mouse.—mus músculus (white, brown and pied varieties).

we have accounts, too, no less remarkable, in reference even to the most contemptible of animals. marcus varro informs us, that a town in spain was undermined by rabbits, and one in thessaly, by mice; that the inhabitants of a district in gaul were driven from their country by frogs, and a 93 place in africa by locusts; that the inhabitants of gyarus, one of the cyclades, were driven away by mice; and the amuncl?, in italy, by serpents. there is a vast desert tract on this side of the ?thiopian cynamolgi, the inhabitants of which were exterminated by scorpions and venomous ants, and theophrastus informs us, that the people of rh?teum were driven away by multipede insects. but we must now return to the other kinds of wild beasts.