WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



or the blackness of midnight. In winter their 

 paths are tunnelled under the snow, so that they 

 are out of sight; and they always have several 

 means of escape from their burrows, for, as the 

 old vsong says, 



" The mouse that always trusts to one poor hole, 

 Can never be a mouse of any soul." 



The Western meadow-mice seem always to lay 

 by considerable stores of winter food. Kennicott 

 says that if you were to uncover one of these little 

 granaries in November, before the owners have 

 made much use of it, you might find five or six 

 quarts of seeds, roots, and small nuts. Out on the 

 prairie this store would consist chiefly of the spike- 

 flower and various other bulbous roots. If a patch 

 of wheat or rye were near, there would be quanti- 

 ties of grain; and if you should open a store (as 

 of the red-backed mouse) under a log or stump in 

 the woods, you might discover a hundred or so chest- 

 nuts, beech-nuts, and acorns, nicely shelled. Nev- 

 ertheless, these mice are out a good deal even in 

 the coldest months, travelling about beneath the 

 snow by means of tunnels, and feeding largely 

 throughout the winter on bark, whereby great dam- 

 age is sometimes done, especially in nurseries. 



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