A HISTORY OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 



the boat, rowed the rat fairly down, and I 

 captured him by hand in mid-stream after 

 one of the most sporting little hunts 

 imaginable. Very good fun may be had in 

 the early summer where there are wide 

 ditches or brooks infested by rats by ferreting 

 them out of their holes into the water, and 

 running after them as they swim away, 

 armed with a long-handled punt landing-net, 

 and scooping them up. 



26. Water Vole. Microtus amphibius, Linn. 

 Bell Aw'uola amfhibius. 



Commonly known as the water rat. Abun- 

 dant in the Thames and its tributaries, as 

 well as the other streams of the county. It 

 is much more at home in the water than the 

 brown rat, and it is far harder to ' pin ' one 

 in shallow water with a punt-pole or boat- 

 hook, or to scoop one up in a landing-net as 

 described under the brown rat. A peculiarity 

 about the water vole when so captured and 

 put into a cage is that each one in turn stands 

 on the defensive (like the Norwegian lem- 

 ming), and fierce battles result, totally at 

 variance with the normal conduct of brown 

 rats under the same circumstances. The 

 latter take matters wonderfully submissively 

 unless by accident one is caged that has re- 

 ceived some slight hurt, when for a few minutes 

 it falls foul of all and sundry whom it may en- 

 counter. Water voles are mischievous to some 

 classes of vegetation ; at Great Marlow we 

 had several magnolias killed at different times 

 by the stems being gnawed by them ; and to 

 embankments, such as artificially-made sides 

 of ponds or canals, by their burrowing allow- 

 ing the water to escape. They are however 

 distinctly an ornament on any piece of water, 

 and afford a pretty sight when swimming, or 

 sitting on a water-lily leaf or little accumulation 

 of floating vegetable flotsam and jetsam, while 

 they busily gnaw away at some edible find. 



For breeding, water rats to a great extent 

 leave the big river in favour of its backwaters 

 and tributary ditches and small streams. 

 Pairing takes place in the water. I have a 

 note of this taking place on 23 April. 

 The male remains, I believe, with his mate, 

 and assists to take care of the young. During 

 June young voles may bo seen very commonly 

 making little excursions in the ditch or other 

 stream in the banks of which they were born. 

 The skin of the water vole is extremely 

 pretty. I have a large antimacassar, or small 

 rug, made of picked skins, all killed during 

 December or January, early in the ' seventies,' 

 and still in good preservation. Only one or 

 two persons out of some dozens to whom I 

 have shown the rug have guessed the source. 



27. Field Vole. Microtus agrestis, Linn. 



Bell Arvicola agrestls. 



Commonly known as grass mouse. Not 

 nearly so abundant as the bank vole, though 

 five and twenty years ago, or even a good 

 deal later, I should have confidently asserted 

 the contrary. They seem more apt to fre- 

 quent the neighbourhood of human habita- 

 tions than the bank vole. On i July 1884 

 I was brought a white but not albino 

 specimen alive, which had been captured the 

 previous day in a hay field close on the Great 

 Marlow side of Razzler Wood (Harleyford). 

 A male example allowed itself to be captured 

 by hand in one of my fields on 28 September, 

 owing no doubt to the fact that it was in- 

 fested with numerous ticks. Mr. F. H. Par- 

 rott has reared the young of this species in 

 captivity, under a long-tailed field mouse. 



28. Bank Vole. Evotomys glareolus, Schre- 



ber. 



Bell Arvicola glareolus. 



Very abundant, and probably much on the 

 increase, the number of its natural enemies 

 (the Mustelidte and raptorial birds, 'and in 

 lesser degree magpies, jays, etc.) being con- 

 tinually and rapidly on the decrease. The 

 plentiful beech-mast crop of 1900 brought 

 millions of this species and the long-tailed 

 field mouse to the woods in this neighbour- 

 hood, whence of course they spread to the 

 neighbouring fields and homesteads. From 

 that autumn until well into the following 

 summer, when walking through a wood after 

 sunset, it would prove positively alive with 

 swarms composed of these two species ; a 

 rustle of dead leaves, or sometimes the mouse 

 itself, catching one's ear or eye every half 

 dozen yards or so. The first two or three of 

 many which I have kept in captivity died 

 within a short time, and I was jumping to 

 the conclusion that they were difficult to keep 

 under artificial conditions, until I discovered 

 that from my ignorantly supposing that they 

 required soft food, their incisors had over- 

 grown, and the poor little voles had starved. 

 A regular supply of nuts, maize and other 

 hard food entirely put an end to the high 

 death-rate. 



29. Common Hare. Lepus europaus, Pallas. 



Bell Lepus timidus. 



Thanks to the Ground Game Act, hares 

 have now very little chance of maintaining a 

 footing except in favoured places where a 

 landowner keeps a fairly large acreage in his 

 own hands. Here hares may still be pre- 

 served and a considerable number accounted 

 for ; and these oases of comparative security 



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