2 THE RIVER-SIDE NATURALIST. 



article of diet. " It is averred," he says, " that the water- 

 rat is liable to be seized and devoured. Passing too near 

 the fatal den, possibly in search of a stray crayfish, whose 

 flavour he highly appreciates, the vole is himself seized 

 and held till he is suffocated, when his captor easily reverses 

 the conditions of the anticipated meal." Others assert that 

 the vole will eat eels, young fish, young ducks, and the 

 like. All these assertions arise from this animal being mis- 

 taken for the common brown rat (Mus decumanus), which 

 in summer and autumn deserts the homesteads and houses, 

 and takes up its abode in the hedgerows and by the water- 

 side, and will devour all kinds of animal matter dead or 

 alive, and, as a writer in Household Words remarks, " making 

 sad havoc amongst the fish that come wandering by," and 

 thus the water-vole gets the blame. This similarity to the 

 brown rat is most unfortunate for the poor beast, for be- 

 sides its natural enemies, the weasel, the stoat, the owl, &c., 

 it is hunted to death by the river-keepers, who declare that 

 it eats the spawn of trout and other fish. Isaac Walton, 

 so kind and so gentle to all living creatures, places the 

 craber, which some call the water-rat, by the side of the 

 otter and cormorant, although he declines to " quarrel with 

 it, as he loves to kill nothing but fish." A correspondent 

 in the Fishing Gazette, March 1887, says: "During a long 

 experience about the water-meadows at all seasons, in the 

 character of angler, naturalist, or sportsman, I have never 

 come upon the vole eating fish ; " and as far as we know, 

 there is no record of any one detecting it eating anything 

 but vegetable food. 



The water-vole is easily distinguished from the common 

 rat. The shape of the head is rounder, the ears much 

 smaller, the tail covered with thick reddish-brown hairs 

 and comparatively short (see Fig. i) ; whereas in the rat 

 the head is more pointed, the eyes more prominent, the 

 ears much longer, and the tail is naked, ringed, and scaly, 

 with a few fine hairs, and considerably more lengthened 

 (see Fig. 2). 



The water-vole is also much more red in colour, almost 

 uniform all over. The common rat has w r hitish under parts. 



