A MINIATURE BRITISH FAUNA 105 



the brush and tangled weedwood runs the dormouse. 

 Its toes are prehensile, and it climbs and runs by 

 turn from spray to spray, and from branch to 

 branch. In such situations the quickness and 

 adroitness it exhibits are exquisitely graceful. 



Or perhaps the sun shines upon the old wall, and 

 our mouse sits upon the cushion-pads of moss that 

 adorn it. Its little hoards are in the wall, and these 

 consist of the harder berries, together with hips, 

 haws, corn, and nuts of beech and hazel. The little 

 colonies hibernate not far from each other; and 

 locality, inclination, and season seem greatly to vary 

 the period of hibernation. In garnering its store of 

 winter food the dormouse comes much abroad at 

 evening; in fact, at all times its habits are more or 

 less nocturnal. From three to five young are 

 produced at a birth, and rarely two families are 

 brought forth in a season. 



Black rooks, white gulls, blue pigeons, are 

 here among the corn. Summer flowers, gaudily 

 coloured, glisten from the ground weeds. A jay, 

 with blue wings, flies from oak to beech, from beech 

 to oak. Straws caught in the hedge are thrashed by 

 the buntings, and yellow-hammers contrast their 

 colours with the corn. Linnets and sparrows and 

 greenfinches have flocked, and are hidden in the 

 stubble. Clover springs green among the corn- 

 stalks, and bees invade the clover-flowers. Now, 



