GNAWING ANIMALS RODENTS 119 



The Wood Mouse. 



A profound ignorance prevails respecting the 

 various kinds of mice, and no attempt is made, even 

 by the ordinary intelligent person, to distinguish 

 mice from voles. Field mice are generally distin- 

 guished from the house mouse as being bigger, 

 though many countrymen will tell you that the mice 

 in the house come from the fields, and that the 

 chano-e of food and habitation brings about the 

 diiference of form. The wood, mouse is known as 

 the long-tailed field mouse, and the field vole^ which 

 is not really a mouse, as the short-tailed field mouse. 



Captain Barrett Hamilton,* who has studied the 

 species, is of opinion that there are as many as 

 nineteen varieties, five of which are found in the 

 British Isles. The typical British wood mouse is 

 tawny-brown in colour above and white below. The 

 bases of the hairs are grey. Sometimes there is a 

 sandy-coloured breast spot, which may extend into a 

 band along the median ventral surface. 



The average length of head and body is 3^ to 4 

 inches, and of the tail nearly the same. The wood 

 mouse may be distinguished from the house mouse 

 by its colour and longer tail, also by its very long- 

 white hind feet. 



It is abundant everywhere in woodland, hedgerow, 

 and garden, and its race far exceeds in number that 

 of any other British mammal. The ravages it makes 

 on almost ever}^ kind of fruit, seed, and bulb are 

 exasperating both to the farmer and gardener, and 

 * ' Proc. Zool. Soc.; 1900, pp. 387-428. 



