568 MURIDAZ—MICROMYS 
but not usually so many as of the House Mouse, are killed 
when a rick is thrashed’; and White (Letter Ix.) made the 
observation that on one occasion the dogs devoured the 
Harvest, but rejected the Common Mice; the cats, vece 
versd. Blasius describes it as not rarely entering houses in 
autumn ; this is not unlikely in the colder portions of Central 
Europe, although such a habit does not appear to have been 
observed in Britain. 
The late Professor Schlegel? was so fortunate as to find 
the winter nests of the Harvest Mouse in a wide ditch near 
Leyden, Holland. These, composed of moss, were attached 
to and between the stems of several reeds, and resembled, 
though more fusiform, the nests of the Reed-warbler, Their 
height was from 6 to 12 inches, their breadth 3 to 4 inches; 
they hung about a foot over the water, without visible means 
of ingress, so that when entering a mouse had to find its way 
through the comparatively loose upper portion. In some cases 
the deserted nests of Aquatic Warblers had been adapted by 
provision of a cap of grass. The colony consisted of about 
fifty nests, and in summer these were replaced by the usual 
globular structures, of the average size of a man’s fist, and 
with a small circular opening near the top. 
The summer nests always contain a bed of soft shredded 
grass. They are placed in coarse, rank herbage; in low 
bushes in open country; but preferably near or on growing 
corn-stalks. The nest described by White (Letter xii.) ‘was 
found in a wheatfield, suspended in the head of a thistle”; 
that found by Macgillivray in Fifeshire was in the midst of a 
tuft of Azra cespitosa, and about 9 inches from the ground ; 
Blasius found nests in grass near a pond, and once saw 
“thousands” of the mice climbing and hanging on grass 
stalks over flooded ground; Schlegel found nests in Rubus 
Sruticosus, Rumex acetosa, Epilobtum, and in Purging Buck- 
thorn® on sand-dunes in Holland. Other nests have been 
recorded in the boughs of a wild Clematis*; in long grass 
1 Landois, Zool. Garten, 1871, 163. 
* Notes from the Leyden Museum, iii., 23-28, 1881 ; reprinted in Zoologisé, 1881, 
233-37: 
3 Hippophae rhamnoides. 1 W. Hewett, Zoologist, 1843, 349. 
