344 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



when men and other enemies walk upon it, and, to be 

 on the safe side, he usually moves through tunnels in 

 the long grass. When the snow was on the ground we 

 saw here and there a short track where his run had 

 broken out into the open, and then, following up the 

 tunnel, were astonished at his activity under that 

 wintry scene. In nose he does not yield to the town- 

 mouse, and wherever in the fields or outhouses there 

 is food that appeals to him, there we find him. 

 Potatoes, peas (just planted in their rows), crocus 

 bulbs, acorns, are good enough for him, and he has 

 not followed the epicure house-mouse into the bee- 

 hives after the honey in the honey-comb. The vole 

 rarely comes into the house, whereas the hearth-mouse 

 is capable of making long excursions into the field. 

 We have just found three of them far out in the 

 garden, snugly camped out in the blankets of a bee- 

 hive that had too large an entrance. 



The house-mouse is a thing all nerves and sensibility. 

 Civilisation has made kittle-cattle of it. Creatures 

 out of doors are so stoical under pain that the casuist 

 easily persuades himself that they feel no pain, and 

 cannot be the subject of cruelty. But any one must 

 be convinced of the contrary when he has caught a 

 house-mouse in a live trap. It is trembling with fear, 

 and actually drenched with perspiration from the 

 obvious mental agony deliberate anthropomorphism 

 this into which its mishap has thrown it. The wood- 

 mouse shares this in some degree when we catch it in 

 the box-trap designed for weasels and stoats, but the 

 vole is as stoical as Fenimore Cooper's Red Indians 

 under torture. So, by the way, is the rabbit, which, 

 with a ferret gnawing at its back, often utters no 



