THE STACKYARD POPULATION 



401 



with life. You hear something moving close by you every 

 minute. Beady eyes glint out of the straw within hand's 

 reach. Brown forms make shadowy passages across the 

 strips of moonlight, and disappear into the black shadows 

 cut clean as if one were land and the other water. On the 

 pent roof, after long rustling, the rats look out at first 

 cautiously before they scamper about. Clearly the owls' cue 

 here is silence ; and from observation one would say that the 

 shriek was quite independent of the strategy of hunting, 

 though American observers maintain that its object is to 

 make the victim proclaim its presence by movement. 



The stackyard is fuller of life than any place in the 

 countryside. When things go hard foxes and stoats come 

 there as well as owls, intent on the same pursuit. The 

 sparrows and finches which may be seen there by day in 

 their hosts bear no comparison in numbers to the mammals. 

 To understand how vast is 

 this population, you must 

 see a stack threshed out. As 

 the men on the disappear- 

 ing stack pull out neatly with 

 their forks each uppermost 

 sheaf and toss it to the re- 

 ceivers on the top of the 

 thresher, mice will tumble 

 down in showers. They are 

 breeding in hosts at any 

 time between November and 

 February ; and each brood 



is at least half a dozen. If a stack is left long and is not raised 

 above reach, the mice and rats will devour much more 

 than their tithe. The bottom layers will be just chaff, not 

 worth the labour of the threshing-machine. The greediest 



LONG-TAILED FIELD-MOUSE 



