DORMICE AND MICE. 



123 



most of this season asleep. Barking is done in strips, or 

 rings, on ten- to twentyfive-years-old trees of birch, hornbeam, 

 hazel, etc., also of larch and silver-fir. 



The loir also bites-off spruce-shoots in order to strip them 

 of their needles and chew them, spitting out 

 the debris. 



The garden-dormouse (M. qnercinus, L.) 

 is rarer than the former, but has a similar 

 habitat, going, however, further north ; it is 

 fond of orchard-fruit, and also attacks forest 

 fruits like the loir. 



The common dormouse (M. avellanarius, 

 L.), chiefly inhabits coppice, especially 

 hazel-coppice, and is found all over Europe, 

 from Sweden to Northern Turkey, but is 

 less common in the south than the other 

 two species. It does similar damage to them, 

 but on a smaller scale, and owing to its fond- 

 ness for hazel-nuts, is termed Hazelmaus in 

 Germany. 



2. Protective Rules, 



Dormice may be caught like rats in iron 

 traps baited with bacon, or for the last 

 species, in wire-traps with almonds as a bait. 



In the extensive beech forests of Carinthia, 

 the capture of the loir is actively pursued, 

 its flesh, which becomes very fat in autumn, 

 being eaten, while the skins are exported, 

 as many as 800,000 being captured in good 

 years of beech-mast. 



Fig. 43. Girdling 

 of beech by dor- 

 mice. 



SECTION VI. MICE. 

 1. Daw age Done. 



Forest mice, especially the long-tailed field-mouse (Mus 

 silvaticus, L.), and to a less degree Mus agrarius, Pall., are 

 very destructive by eating forest fruits and seeds, biting and 

 gnawing, burrowing in the ground and killing small birds. 



