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AUTUMN AND WINTER 



the broad cheeks rough and broken. They are pretty little 

 creatures, but without the gracefulness of the true mice. 

 Besides raiding garden beds, bank-voles are particularly fond 

 of bark, and sometimes do much damage to young saplings, 

 which are naturally not protected from these small creatures 

 by ordinary rabbit-netting. The marks of their fine teeth 

 can often be seen on peeled stems or twigs in plantations or 

 hedgerows towards the end of a hard winter. Field- voles 

 and wood-mice also eat bark, but less often. 



Shrews hunt actively in winter, both by day and by night, 

 when the weather is not frosty enough to make them drowsy, 



MOLE 



and to cut off the supply of worm and insect food. In 

 normally mild weather, they hunt largely on the open surface 

 of the ground by night, and by day push among the leaves 

 and grass-roots along the runs made by themselves and by 

 mice and voles. In frosty weather, worms and insects are not 

 found above ground ; and the stiffened leaves and soil make 

 it hard to push along the runs. Their appetite is very large, 

 as is that of their relative the mole. Moles are also busily at 

 work in mild weather all through the winter ; even in moderate 

 spells of frost we can see each morning the fresh earth thrown 

 out by them on the banks of sheltered lanes and the warm 

 flanks of copses facing the south. The rat has no periods of 

 hibernation ; in the hardest frost it merely moves to more 

 sheltered quarters in buildings or rickyards, or the warmth 



