T wo MAMMAL ODDITIES.
Two oddities, in a different branch of natural histbry, are amusing other observers. An utterly unknown animal has been frequenting a group of young plantations for the last year. It is described by a keeper who has seen it more often than anyone else as a " pig-deer." It has slotted feet and is no bigger than a hare. His description would exactly fit the Porcula. But how should such a beast be in Hertfordshire ? I heard the other day of a country girl who mistook a small roe deer for a fox. She reported, delightfully, that she had seen " a fox with kind eyes." The deScriPtions of this mysterious beast (which can never be found when sought) seem to preclude the possibility that it can be a dwarf roe. In my own garden I have been watching one of the oddest mammals I ever saw. It is a very small piebald vole. It lives under the roots of a dead elin and makes little timid excursions along the bottom of the stream. Its smallness as well as its colour is exceptional. Is it possible that the frost had something to do with the deficiency of size and colouring matter ?
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