MICE 65 



times a nuisance in gardens when numerous ; 

 but it is very engaging, and surely, in spite 

 of the gardener, we have room for it. 



There is another member of the Muridae 

 or mice occasionally, though rarely, found in 

 Scotland the little harvest mouse, Mus min- 

 utus, which has been reported from Midlothian, 

 the eastern lowland counties, and even so far 

 north as Aberdeenshire. This tiny creature, of 

 much the same colouring as the last, but only 

 some 2^ inches in length, builds a wonderful 

 nest of interwoven corn-stalks or grasses sus- 

 pended between the standing stalks of corn or 

 reeds. It has not been found in the west, so is 

 unrepresented here. 



The brownish, somewhat larger animal under 

 the curled frond of springing bracken, with 

 large, round stumpy head, small eyes and ears, 

 and short tail, is often termed the short-tailed 

 field mouse ; it is no mouse at all but a vole, 

 the field vole, Arvicola agrestis. It is plenti- 

 ful, sometimes far too plentiful, throughout 

 Scotland and the Islands, although again not in 

 Shetland. It feeds on vegetable matter of all 

 sorts, and is the animal that caused so much 

 damage in 1890-1 as to induce the Government 

 to appoint a Committee, under the chairman- 

 ship of Sir Herbert E. Maxwell, to examine 



