CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER 7. RODENTIA 



441 



THE LONG-TAILED FIELD-MOUSE. 



with which it is often confounded, it being four to five inches long, and the tail nearly the length 

 of the body. Its color is a yellowish-fawn above and white below ; the eyes are large and prom- 

 inent; the ears large. It lives in the woods and fields in summer, but in winter resorts to the 

 granaries. As the common mouse sometimes dwells in gardens, and even in fields and forests, so 

 this species occasionally takes up its abode in houses. It is a most destructive species, and a 

 great pest to the horticulturist, the agriculturist, and the planter. It is very prolific, bringing 

 forth from seven to ten at a birth, and is not always stinted to one brood in a year. The hoards 

 that it collects in its subterranean retreats — which are sometimes the results of its own labor, but 

 more frequently excavations which it finds ready made, but which it enlarges, such as those under 

 roots of trees, old mole-runs, &c. — are enormous for the size of the animal, and Pennant is of 

 opinion that the great damage done by hogs in rooting up the ground is caused chiefly by the 

 search of the swine for the concealed treasure of the Field-Mouse. It is an inhabitant of the 

 whole of temperate Europe and parts of Asia. 



THE HARVEST MOUSE. 



The Harvest Mouse, Mus minutus, or Mus messorius — the Rat Nain of the French — the 

 ; smallest of mice, and perhaps the very minutest of mammalia, an English half-penny weighing 

 Vol. L— 56 



