CHAPTER III 



THE MEADOW-MOUSE AND ITS 

 MISCHIEF 



WHILE the alien rats and mice are working 

 costly mischief about the house, stable, and 

 granary, their native cousins, the wild mice, 

 are doing vast harm in garden, orchard and 

 field. Naturalists count 200 or more species of 

 these animals in North America, but we need 

 concern ourselves with only certain types, 

 since, from the farmer's point of view, the ac- 

 tions of all are much alike, and the principal 

 damage is caused by those of a single group 

 the short-tailed meadow-mice of the genus 

 Microtus. To this genus alone David E. Lantz 

 has devoted a treatise of 64 pages in the pub- 

 lications (Bulletin 31) of the U. S. Biological 

 Survey from which, as before, I shall quote 

 freely. He prefaces this treatise with the 

 statement that the mice of this genus alone 

 cause an average annual damage to American 

 farmers of not less than $3,000,000. It is this 



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