XOO MAMMALS OF PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. 



of the mouse as a tiller of the soil, a destroyer of weeds, utilizer of otherwise 

 useless grasses, and a food supply for two-thirds of our carnivorous birds, 

 mammals, and reptiles, is apparent. Exterminate the mouse, and the 

 changed food relations resulting therefrom would cause the extermination of 

 many most beneficial animals and the conversion of others into pests to the 

 greatest detriment of agriculture. Let us not forget, on the other hand, that 

 any marked decrease of the animals which prey on the meadow mouse is 

 equally to be deprecated, attended as it might be with similar consequences 

 to the ' vole plagues ' of the old world. To maintain the balance of power' 

 between these neutralizing agencies, in the changed conditions imposed by 

 advancing civilization, is the real province of economic natural science." 



In the above extract, only casual reference is made to the destructive pine 

 vole, or short-tailed, underground, mole-like cousin of the meadow mouse. 

 This species, whose vices are almost universally charged to the meadow 

 mouse and the mole, will be more fully treated beyond. 



The meadow mouse makes its nest on the surface of the ground in uplands 

 where grass or debris lie thickest, forming it wholly of fine grasses in a globu- 

 lar form, with two exits on the under side. In swampy ground, they place it 

 in the top of a dense tussock out of reach of ordinary flood or tide. In the 

 salt marshes of the coast they are so excessively abundant that by stamping 

 about vigorously on the grassy margins of the pools they may be driven into 

 the water, diving and swimming with great agility to the farther side, and so 

 escaping. They greatly enjoy feasting upon the trapped carcasses of their 

 fellows, or of other mice, in the winter season when snow covers their more 

 natural food. I have found that they do this in summer occasionally. 



The history of the naming of this mouse has more than a local interest. In 

 the earHer edition of Alexander Wilson's Ornithology it is figured and a de- 

 scription given (vol. 6, p. 59), based on specimens observed near Philadel- 

 phia, either on "The Neck" meadows or on those near Bartram's Garden, 

 along the Schuylkill, a place then frequented by Wilson. George Ord, the 

 subsequent editor of Wilson's completed Ornithology and one of the early 

 presidents of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, made Wilson's 

 description of this meadow mouse the basis of his name, Mus pennsyh>anica> 

 which was published in 18 15 in the second American edition of Guthrie's 

 Geography. This work had become so nearly extinct in the next 50 years 

 tnat authors had adopted Ord's subsequent name for the same species, An^i- 

 cola riparius. In November, 1893, I discovered a copy of this long-lost 

 edition of Guthrie's Geography and published a reprint of the part contrib- 



value of the meadow mouse, denies that it is anything but a pest, and states that its destruc- 

 tion of trees in nurseries is alone sufficient to condemn it. I have since corresponded with 

 two prominent Pennsylvania nurserymen, Mr. Thomas Meehan and the Wm. H. Moon Co.> 

 both of whom deny that they have suffered by this mouse to any extent. 



