THE WATER-RAT OR WATER-VOLE. 



in woods, and overgrown with a dense entangle- 

 ment of briar and berry, and here, having their 

 creeps deep in the undergrowth, they may spend 

 the winter unseen and unsuspected. During ex- 

 ceptionally cold snaps they often remain under- 

 ground for days on end, and this fact would seem 

 to suggest some kind of a store within the dwell- 

 ing. In all probability water-voles, like many 

 other creatures, hoard their stores unsystematic- 

 ally in various places, a little here and a little 

 there, instead of placing all their eggs in one 

 basket ; and though we have on sundry occasions 

 found caches at the water's edge, among the under- 

 mined roots of river-trees, or in the hollow trunks 

 of the trees themselves, and though the work 

 looked like that of water-voles, no decisive proof 

 was forthcoming. It is, however, very difficult to 

 understand how this little animal could survive a 

 winter of exceptional severity if it had no store of 

 some kind on which to fall back. Its diving-powers, 

 as already stated, are not great, and it is almost in- 

 conceivable that it could keep itself alive for any 

 length of time by procuring its food from the bed 

 of the pond or the stream beside which it lived. In 

 some cases this might be done, but the gravel-beds of 

 most of our northern streams must be particularly 

 unfruitful, though many water-voles manage to 

 winter by them. Assuredly these individuals do 

 not keep themselves alive by diving for their food. 

 Similarly, I have known several voles to winter by a 

 little woodland pond, the bed of which consisted of 

 unfertile clay thickly covered with decaying leaves. 

 In such cases the vole that had no store would, 

 when the earth was frost-bound, be compelled to 

 obtain all its food from above the ground, thereby 

 exposing itself to such perils that it would un- 



