224 ODD HOURS WITH NATURE 



office to which he devotes great attention. Sitting 

 on his haunches like a little black or brown bear, 

 he carefully combs the fur of his face and head 

 with his fore -paws. This smoothed out to his 

 satisfaction, he surveys the surrounding vegeta- 

 tion and tries his teeth on the top of a tall grass, 

 holding it with both " hands " with a squirrel-like 

 air. But grass is not much to his taste, and 

 presently he plunges into the water in search of 

 better fare. Swimming under the water, his 

 resemblance to the rat is complete enough to 

 ensure him the compliment of a stone from almost 

 any human creature who, seeing him, can lay 

 hands on one. But if no stone is flung he is soon 

 on the bank again with a piece of iris leaf or root, 

 which he evidently regards "a bit of all right " ; 

 but almost any kind of water -growing plant 

 satisfies his sober taste. Barring alarms, this is 

 his inoffensive programme all day. 



It would be difficult to name a creature more 

 absolutely harmless than the water-vole. Its 

 relative the field-vole, as often designated a mouse 

 as the water-vole is a rat, is not harmless by any 

 means. When circumstances favour it, it multiplies 

 at a prodigious rate, and has been known to ruin 

 vast areas of pasture, not because it eats the 

 verdure up, as is sometimes thought, but because 

 it cuts out for itself a most lavish provision of 

 galleries at the roots of the grass, and thereby 

 destroys an amount of herbage out of all propor- 

 tion to its size. Those galleries are made for 

 the purpose of concealed movement, field -voles 

 having learnt in the course of their long history 



