560 MURID/ZE—MICROMYS 
coloured Field Mice for Harvest Mice (see also W. Evans, Azw. Scott. 
Nat. Hist., 1898, 47). 
According to E. R. Alston (J7S., in his copy of Bell), the Harvest 
Mouse is generally but locally distributed in the eastern lowland 
counties of Scotland, but it is absent from the west and north 
of Scotland. 
The Harvest Mouse does not occur in Ireland, although it has 
been recorded thence in error on several occasions. Thus Bell’s 
record (ed. ii., 291, fide Kinahan) has been shown by A. G. More? to be 
an error. <A nest of young mice found in a thistle in a field of oats in 
Co. Donegal (S. A. Brenan, /7zsh Wat., 1898, 125) may have been that 
of the Lesser Shrew (Scharff, /oc. cé¢.). Thompson (iv., 1856, 15) also 
has a note from Shane’s Castle Park, Co. Antrim, of a nest described 
as suspended between stalks of wheat, but this could not have been 
the nest of a Harvest Mouse. 
Distribution in time, and origin:—The species is quite unknown 
as a fossil; its absence from Ireland, and its present absence from 
much of England and Scotland, together with its wide distribution 
in the East, indicate that it is an Eastern species which has arrived 
in western Europe only at a comparatively recent date. 
Description :—The Harvest Mouse is characterised by its exceed- 
ingly small size, elongated and slender form, and by its bright 
coloration. The head is narrow, the snout short and blunt. The eyes 
are black, quite small, and less prominent than in the Field Mouse. 
The ears are relatively small, rounded and thick; they extend barely 
half-way to the eyes when laid forwards: in each the antitragus is 
developed as a triangular valve about 2 mm. high, capable of completely 
closing the meatus; this valve is clothed with a tuft of long hairs, 
nearly 5 mm. in length, and the general surface of the ear, both within 
and without, is clothed with shorter and finer hairs. In the hands the 
pads are arranged as in the Field Mouse, but the posterior two are 
relatively larger, closely approximated or even fusing together along 
the median line behind, and forming with the small thumb a single 
tubercular mass opposed to the balls of the fingers; in addition, a small 
free pad is present external to that at the base of the fifth finger 
(Winge). The feet are long and narrow (though relatively a little 
broader than in the Field Mouse); the soles are naked ; the pads are like 
those of A. sy/vaticus in number and arrangement, but the two posterior 
ones are relatively larger and of more elongated form, the sixth being 
1 Edward’s description appears to leave little room for doubting that his 
specimens were really Harvest Mice; Taylor’s suggestion does not seem probable, 
inasmuch as young Field Mice of the size indicated would be in the dull juvenal 
pelage (see the table at p. 515 above). 
* In J. E. Harting, Zoo/ogist, 1895, 420. 
