502 



Life-histories of Northern Animals 



digs and burrows. These are rather simple, with few or no side 

 passages, and often with but one entrance, the depth and extent 

 being variable, but never great. * * * jj^ cultivated fields the 

 burrows are frequently dug at 'the roots of fruit trees.'" 

 NESTING Out on the prairie it nests in any chance shelter afforded 



by a wisp of grass or straw, an overhanging bank, an overturned 

 sod, or even a den underground, especially among the roots 



■iUTlliTi' 



Fig. 147 — Nest of Prairie Deermouse, Carberry, Man., 18 

 Seven doors of entrj- ; three blind tunnels. 



BREED- 

 ING 



in a scrubby bank. These underground homes are dug by 

 the Mouse itself and are very simple affairs, readily distin- 

 guished from the tunnels of the Striped Ground-squirrel by 

 the shortness, simplicity, and size. The Ground-squirrel 

 makes a tunnel about i| inches in diameter, that of the Mouse 

 is but I inch. 



In the summer of 1882 I saw and caught a Deermouse 

 on a little prairie knoll near my shanty. It proves to have 

 been hairdt. In October I dug open this knoll and found the 

 nest of which the plan is here shown. It was about six inches 

 from the surface. The chamber was lined with soft, dry grass, 

 but was quite empty. As the tunnels were too small for the 

 Striped Ground-squirrel, and hairdi the only Mouse ever 

 seen about that spot, I assume this to have been the den 

 of the latter species. It is shown in the accompanying 

 illustration (Fig. 147). 



The young, as with arcticus, are produced in a succession 

 of three or four broods between snow and snow. 



