MAMMALS OF PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. IO3 



Blarina brevicanda, found in the same burrows : "Undoubtedly the greater 

 part, if not all, of the depredations described must be laid at the door of an 

 animal very dissimilar to the shrew, namely the Pine Vole {Microtus pine- 

 torum). I say dissimilar, and yet the short tail, squat form, fossorial fore 

 feet and very small eyes of the pine vole, together with its similar size, might 

 easily deceive a casual observer and make one confound it with the shrew. 

 The pine vole, however, is a rodent and one of the strictest vegetarians of its 

 order. It can be instantly distinguished from any of the Insectivora, and 

 from the shrew in particular, by its rounded head, short, blunt snout and the 

 space in the jaws separating the long curved fore teeth from the fiat prism- 

 crowned cheek-teeth or molars. In the shrew this vacancy is filled by a 

 ferocious armature of fangs, and the pig-like snout is long and pointed ; the 

 eyes also are nearly invisible, while the pine vole has well developed, bead- 

 like eyes. The shrew is of a uniform, dark, glossy lead color, slightly brown- 

 ish and silvery in certain lights, while the vole is rusty or brown-red above 

 and grayish lead color below. The pine vole belongs to the same genus as 

 the common meadow mouse which haunts our fields and swamps, making the 

 intricate network of surface runs which shows so plainly along the fence rows 

 when snowdrifts melt away. Unlike the meadow vole, the subject of our 

 sketch rarely comes to the surface of the ground, but is almost as subter- 

 ranean as the mole in its habits. Being less powerful than the mole, it con- 

 fines its tunnels to looser soils, prefering sandy, fallow ground for its foraging 

 and is especially fond of cultivated fields along the edge of woodland. Should 

 such a field be planted with some tuber-bearing crop the vole is in its ele- 

 ment, and the number of burrows which honeycomb the ground is almost 

 incredible. In some sweet potato fields scarce a square foot of the whole 

 field adjoining the woods was left unvisited. The amount of damage which 

 such an army of rodents can perform may be imagined. I have known them 

 to follow along the drills of newly covered seed corn, peas and wax beans so 

 industriously as to require the entire replanting of parts of the field. Their 

 diet however may include the roots and bulbs of some noxious plants. They 

 eat wild garlic roots, often smelling offensively of it. Whether insects are 

 eaten is an interesting question. It does not hesitate to use the burrows of 

 the mole ; in fact, moles, shrews, deer mice and pine voles make free use of 

 each other's highways in a most democratic fashion. Mayhap first goes 

 along Scalops, the four-footed plowman, industriously heaving the sod and 

 devouring earthworms and larger insects that fall into his furrow ; then the 

 mole shrew i^Blarina) trips through the passage gathering fragments and 

 nosing about for larger game. A pine vole, making a cross-cut, falls into 

 the breach and goes off on an easy exploring expedition for tap-roots, and in 

 due time the deer mouse {Fero?nyscus) tiptoes along gathering crumbs. In 

 these excursions the various tenants of the manor often collide, the great 



