THE LONG-TAILED FIELD MOUSE 17 



cornstacks and other places where foodstuffs are stored or used, 

 and at times is very troublesome in gardens, unearthing peas and 

 beans, also crocuses and other roots, and destroys young trees and 

 vines by gnawing the bark round the stems just beneath or at the 

 surface of the ground, and it is very fond of ripe fruit, particularly 

 forced strawberries and late grapes. The chief food, however, 

 of this animal consists of grain, seeds, rcots, breadstuffs, lard, flesh, 

 cheese, and, if opportunity offers, confectionery and even honey. 

 LONG-TAILED FIELD MOUSE (Mns sylvaticm], Fig. 15, is of a 

 brown or chestnut colour, with a darker stripe along the middle 

 of the back, whilst the body and tail is of a whitish colour beneath. 

 It frequents woods, fields, nurseries and gardens, and feeds upon 

 seeds, roots, conifer seeds, acorns, beech-mast, hazel nuts and other 

 products of hedgerow and woodland shrubs and trees. It also 

 turns up and devours seed-grain, peas and beans, ' ' rot-heap " and seed- 



FIG. 15. THE LONG-TAILED FIELD MOUSE. 



bed seeds, nibbles off buds of seedlings and " transplants," and some- 

 times the bark and wood of small trees in young plantations, peel- 

 ing and nibbling the stems at a height of I to 3 feet, while damaging 

 seed-beds by its burrowing. 



The long-tailed field mouse has a particular penchant for barking 

 trees in young plantations up to ten or twelve years of age, especially 

 on warm sunny exposures with a tangled soil-covering of grass and 

 weeds, beech, ash, maple, sycamore, and willow being most attrac- 

 tive, although in hard winters the animal will attack almost any 

 young ligneous plant. Even in orchards young stems up to 2 

 inches in diameter may be gnawed round at from i to 3 feet above 

 the soil. This is the more remarkable as the long-tailed field mouse 

 lays up a store of food for the winter, an excavation being made in 

 the ground and stored with such provisions as chestnuts, acorns, 

 hazel nuts and seeds of various kinds, hence much of the damage 

 done to young trees is often that of voles, not of the wood- 

 mouse. It produces from four to six young twice or thrice in a year. 



B.N. . c 



