WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



of waging battles constantly among themselves. 

 Their food is the tender stems of young grasses 

 and herbs, seeds, nuts, roots, and bark, and the}^ 

 lay up stores of food for the winter, since none 

 become torpid at that season except the jumping- 

 mouse. They also eat insects and worms, par- 

 ticularly such kinds as are hatched under ground 

 or in the loose wood of rotten stumps; but their 

 main subsistence is vegetal. 



The field-mice make snug beds in old stumps, 

 under logs, inside stacks of corn and bundles of 

 straw; dig out galleries below the grass-roots; 

 occupy nests of birds and the holes made by other 

 mammals; and even weave nests of their own in 

 weeds and bushes. Crevices of broken rocks are a 

 favorite resort of the jumping-mouse. 



This species is, perhaps, the most active of them 

 all ; and is found in a greater variety of situations, 

 for it is equally fond of the fields and of the forest, 

 where it creeps about in the dusk, or, if alarmed, 

 bounds away with almost incredible agility. Its 

 long and muscular hind-legs lift its body like pow- 

 erful springs, and it will make leap after leap with 

 a speed the eye can hardly follow. At first these 

 jumps will be ten feet — some forty times its own 

 length! — but if no covert enables it to stop and con- 



178 



