LIFE IN WINTER NIGHTS 299 



warehouses or sewers. The so-called ' Old English ' black 

 rat which was merely an earlier immigrant is a much 

 more attractive animal than the common brown one ; but the 

 wood-mouse is far more graceful and pleasing than the black 

 rat, as well as being so far free from any suspicion of 

 conveying plague. It is a rather larger and much shapelier 

 creature than the common house-mouse, with larger eyes and 

 ears ; and the reddish-brown fur of its upper parts is almost 

 as handsome as that of the dormouse. It has quite a 

 different build and expression from the thickset and blunt- 

 faced voles, which are commonly classed 

 with it under the name of field-mice, but 

 belong to a different family in the same 

 order of rodents. Shrews are often 

 regarded as field-mice also, but belong 

 to a completely different order (the 

 insectivora), which also includes the 



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mole and hedgehog. British species of 



& to WOOD-MOUSE 



mice include the house-mouse, harvest- 

 mouse and wood-mouse ; there are several local races of the 

 wood-mouse which are now usually regarded as sub-species. 

 The dormouse belongs to a separate family, with some 

 points of similarity to the squirrel ;. and besides these four 

 species, there are the bank and field voles (of the same 

 family as the water-vole or water-rat), with some local sub- 

 species like those of the wood-mouse. Shrews include three 

 species the common shrew, the water shrew, and the lesser 

 shrew, which is the smallest British mammal except the 

 harvest-mouse. All this group of rodents and insect-eaters 

 are largely nocturnal ; but they are not all active in winter. 

 The sleep of the hedgehog is unbroken until the spring ; and 

 the dormouse only wakes for a few brief intervals, and 

 appears to make little use of the stores of nuts and seeds 



