WOOD MOUSE. 5p 



sionally met with which exceed the rest in mag- 

 nitude, though differing in no other respect. Its 

 general length is about four inches and a half 

 from nose to tail, and the tail, which is slightly 

 covered with hair, measures four inches. The 

 colour of the animal is a yellowish brown above 

 and whitish beneath ; the colours being pretty 

 distinctly marked or separated : the eyes are full 

 and black, and the snout rather blunt. These 

 animals retire into holes among brushwood, and 

 under the trunks of trees, where they amass great 

 quantities of acorns, nuts, and beech-mast. Ac- 

 cording to Buffon, a whole bushel has sometimes 

 been found in a single hole. These holes are 

 about a foot or more under ground, and are often 

 divided into two apartments, the one for living in 

 along with their vounsr, the other for a magazine 



O v <J' ^j 



of provisions. Considerable damage is often done 

 to plantations by these animals, which carry off 

 new-sown acorns, &c. The Count de Buffon af- 

 firms, that in France more mischief is done by 

 these creatures than by all the birds and other 

 animals put together ; and adds, that the only 

 way to prevent this is by laying traps, at ten 

 paces asunder, through the whole extent of the 

 sown ground. No other apparatus, he says, is 

 necessary than a roasted walnut, placed under a 

 stone supported by a stick : the animals come to 

 eat the walnut, which they prefer to acorns, and 

 as the walnut is fixed to the stick, whenever they 

 touch it the stone falls and kills them. The same 

 expedient may be as successfully used for the 



