68 FAUNA OF SHROPSHIRE. 



HARVEST MOUSE, This tiniest of British Mammals is 

 Mus minutus. rather rare in Shropshire, and even 



where it occurs is very local, being, 

 perhaps, found in one field and not in the next. Mr. T. C. 

 Eyton had in his collection a pair with their nest which 

 he found on the Weald Moors. The animal and its nest 

 are well described by old Gilbert White in his " Natural 

 History of Selborne." The nest is most wonderfully 

 compacted of grass woven into a perfect sphere about 

 the size of a cricket ball, and attached between four or 

 five stalks of wheat. There is no special opening for 

 ingress, but the grass is a little thinner in one spot, 

 where the Mice push their way through. Here the 

 female produces six or seven young, which, as in all 

 the Mice, are at first naked and blind, and it is believed 

 to have several litters in the season. Its food consists 

 principally of seeds of all kinds, insects and worms, and 

 it is said to often enter wheat stacks in great numbers, 

 though it more often makes burrows in the ground, in 

 which it lays up winter stores. " So light is the Harvest 

 Mouse its weight being only the fifth of an ounce 

 that it can ascend a wheat stalk and feast on the corn 

 in the ear ; its descent being facilitated by its partially 

 prehensile tail. In possessing an imperfect power of 

 prehension in that appendage, the creature is unique 

 among British Mammals." [NOTE. Dr. Sankey writes: 

 Rats use their tails slightly in descending a stick or 

 twigj. The general colour is brown-red above and white 

 beneath, with a sharp line of demarcation. Total length 

 4J- inches, of which the tail is nearly half. The whole 

 animal is very slenderly built, and the eyes are less 

 full and prominent than in our other Mice. 



