This is one of many remarkable nature studies which have been made
possible by Dr. George Shiras 3rd’s invention and development of
animal flashlight photography, with the animals themselves as the
photographers. The naturalist may have to spend hours, sometimes
days, waiting in swamp or desert to study his quarry, but by means
of flashlight photographs the inhabitants of the wild are revealed
in their native haunts to all who read a story told in pictures. Dr.
Shiras’s notable contributions to this magazine have always won hearty
appreciation from members of the National Geographic Society.]
To most people the majority of small rodents are classed as “rats” or
“mice” and are viewed with the prejudice born of long familiarity with
those omnipresent pests, the house rats and mice. The small beasts of
field and forest are commonly of remotest kinship to these repulsive
household parasites and are of entirely different lineage, having
nothing in common but their size.