MAMMALS. 71 



The Harvest Mouse is reported as having been seen or 

 taken at Bayston Hill, Pulverbatch, Broseley, and several 

 other places which the author does not name as the 

 records require confirmation. In the Zoologist for 1895 

 p. 447, is an interesting account of the finding of several 

 nests at Church Stretton, and the writer, Mr. G. W. 

 Murdock, states that this mouse is common there. 

 WOOD MOUSE or Long-tailed Field-mouse. This 

 M. sylvaticus. little animal is abundant all over the 



County. In appearance it resembles 

 the common House Mouse but has larger eyes and ears 

 and a longer tail, while it is usually of a much lighter 

 colour. It occurs in hedgebanks, woods, fields of grain or 

 grass, stackyards, and sometimes even in houses. If 

 farmers only knew the amount of newly sown seeds 

 destroyed every year by this Mouse and the Field-vole (or 

 short-tailed Field-mouse), they would do all in their power 

 to lessen their numbers by protecting Owls, Kestrels, 

 Buzzards, and Weasels, all of which prey almost ex- 

 clusively on these little pests. The Barn, or White, 

 Owl should head the list of the Friends of the British 

 Farmer, as this bird regularly hunts over every acre 

 of arable land for mice, and, especially when it has 

 young, destroys them in hundreds. The Wood Mouse, 

 although it prefers grain and seeds to any other food 

 does not confine itself to these : it also eats bulbs, nuts, 

 and acorns, and lays up winter stores underground. 

 The writer has noticed a curious habit it has of biting 

 off the "hips" or berries of the Wild Rose and 

 storing them up in old nests of the thrush and black- 

 bird, the crimson mass presenting a strange contrast 

 to the bare hedge in winter. It does not hibernate, or at 



