68 BEACH GRASS 



The white-footed mouse also makes tracks like 

 a rabbit and he is apt to have runways or paths 

 where many tracks are to be seen. In going up a 

 slope, the tracks become linear, two together in 

 each print, as if the pretty little creature were 

 trotting. One midwinter day I noticed many 

 tracks about an old ship's timber in the dunes. 

 Beneath it was a nest of dry grass, the size of two 

 fists, from which peeped a very sleepy, white- 

 footed mouse. 



Tracks of the jumping-mouse are similar but 

 smaller, and often show the tail, switched some- 

 times to one side and sometimes to the other. I 

 measured the tracks of one that had galloped at 

 speed across the sand and made jumps at seven- 

 teen or eighteen inches, and one at nineteen 

 inches. 



Fortunately for the nesting birds, cats are 

 rarely found in the dunes. One is generally kept 

 at the lighthouse, and she has been so obliging as 

 to make tracks in damp sand for me to photo- 

 graph. About the size of a skunk's tracks, they 

 are easily distinguished from those of any other 

 animal to be met with in these regions by the ab- 



