Sables exist in every possible shade, and some of them are of the richest and most beautiful quality. Silver grey is a fashionable colour this year, and I have seen some very perfect specimens with bluish-grey coats.
The marked mouse is a most popular fancy, and no wonder, for in this department the most wonderful results have been obtained, as our illustrations prove.
At the present moment a well-known lady fancier is striving to obtain a Dalmatian mouse. She has already a most wonderfully spotted specimen, and hopes before long to show a perfect example.
Apart from their great beauty, fancy mice pay, and pay well. At the National Mouse Show I was shown several specimens worth £5 apiece, and as much as £20 has been given for a champion. The two mice in our picture of judging are both £5 animals.
Another thing about them is that they are practically all profit. The bread and milk and occasional hemp seed upon which they live is used in such small quantities that an expenditure of 6_d_. per week will suffice to keep dozens.
Then there are many fanciers who make a lot of money out of their young mice. A working man in the North of England, who is an ardent fancier, makes no less than £15 per annum in this way, besides an occasional pound or two for an extra-promising specimen.
Many fanciers have very large collections. The secretary of the National Mouse Club possesses some 2,000 in his cages, and I know at least half a dozen others whose collections range between two and five hundred. At one day old the mice are little pink objects scarcely longer than a wax vesta, minus sight and minus coat. I saw a litter of this age in Staffordshire some time ago. A fortnight later they were in full war paint, and were winning prizes at a big show in the "under eight weeks" class. It is well that they develop so quickly, since at two years they get ill and out of condition and are usually destroyed.
There are many collections in this country valued at £30, and I know of one for which £100 has been offered and refused.
As with other fancy animals, the best specimens are selected from a litter and the rest are drowned. The selected mice are reared with the greatest care, and as soon as they are of the right size and age they commence the round of the shows. At home they are kept in immense tenement cages, divided into tiny compartments for two, but they travel to the shows singly in special exhibition cages.