THE FLOEAL WOELD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 2S5 



mouse, or as it is sometimes called, the " Long-tailed Eield Mouse " 

 — a pretty, gentle, timid creature after all, with large, bright eyes, 

 and broader and rounder ears than those of the house mouse, and 

 ■with a tail nearly as long as its bead and body. Like the squirrel, 

 it lays up stores of food for the winter — seeds, nuts, and grain, etc. 

 It probably sleeps a good deal during the very cold weather, and 

 yet may be seen venturing forth even when the snow is upon the 

 ground to forage for food if its store is becoming exhausted, and 

 rather than starve will burrow down to our crocus and snowdrop 

 bulbs and nibble them away. Since it feeds principally on vegetable 

 food, it lives on good terms with the other inhabitants of our gardens, 

 and has only to fear being caught by some stray cat or owl who is 

 on the look out for mice and moles. It is curious to think of the 

 quiet snug life which our little mice settlers may lead all the winter, 

 feeding and sleeping alternately in their warm nests ; and yet cases 

 may arrive when, perhaps, the winter being longer than usual, and 

 their storehouse becoming exhausted, and nothing to be had in the 

 garden that will suit them, they will make their way out beyond its 

 boundaries again, and get into some neighbouring wood or planta- 

 tion, where beech-nuts and acorns are still to be found in the dead 

 leaves at the foot of trees. A near relation of the wood-mouse is a 

 somewhat still smaller animal, and is likely only to pay us very 

 short visits. It is called the harvest mouse, and living principally 

 on grain, constructs for itself a nest amidst the stalks of corn, like 

 a round bag hung amoDg them, formed of leaves and grass woven 

 together. The entrance into this curious nest is contrived so as to 

 close as with a spriDg after the owner has entered it, or when he 

 leaves it, filled with his young ones or with his store of food. This 

 mouse is able to catch hold of objects, such as a twig or stalk of 

 corn, with the end of his tail, like an opossum, so as to swing him- 

 self from one twig or stalk to another. Mice have such large 

 families, and increase their numbers so fast that a naturalist who 

 wanted to ascertain how fast they would multiply, put a pair of 

 harvest mice into a large box, together with a quantity of grain, 

 and on opening the box three or four months afterwards found that 

 there were one hundred and twenty mice in it. 



The mole is another quadruped which is sure to invade our 

 gardens, or pay them occasional visits, though we do not often meet 

 with him above ground. In a neighbouring field we may perhaps 

 see the little hillocks of earth which moles bring to the surface after 

 burrowing out the subterranean passages which they form, and even 

 in our own gardens such traces of them are to be found when they 

 make their way under our walls aud fences, in search of earth-worms, 

 which form their principal article of food. From time to time we 

 do, however, get a sight of moles, and though we may fancy them 

 at first to be ugly and shapeless creatures, it is worth our while to 

 examine them well, that we may learn how curiously their form is 

 Buited to their manner of life. First of ail, the long shapeless body 

 is covered with a most smooth and velvet-like fur, which will turn 

 any way, so that while groping about underground it enables the 

 creature to slip easily through the passages it burrows out, either 



August. 



