Countrymen's Nature Lore 143 



woods. He knows the " sleep-mouse " or dor- 

 mouse, found with its feathery tail wrapped about 

 it in its nest of grass among the autumn bushes ; 

 and he now and then meets the nests of the harvest- 

 mouse as he reaps some wind-laid cornfield with the 

 sickle. The frequency with which the common 

 shrew is found dead on paths and other bare spaces 

 obtruded it early upon his knowledge. The shrew 

 long held an evil fame, under the name of the " over- 

 runner," for striking sickness into cattle as they 

 lay asleep, and took as prominent a place as the 

 toad, or the wryneck in antiquity, among the 

 medicines of white magic. But although he makes 

 two weasels out of one, the rustic knows of no settled 

 distinction between the wood-mouse and the two 

 species of land-voles. All of them he calls simply 

 field-mice, and regards their differences in shape of 

 head and length of tail as being merely individual 

 perversities of troublesome little creatures. His 

 nomenclature is all the more confusing for its 

 misapplying familiar names, or at least applying 

 them differently. In certain parts of the west, 

 chiffchaffs, wood-wrens, and willow-wrens are all 

 called whitethroats. The whitethroat of the books 

 is called the nettle-creeper ; and this would be an 

 excellent and distinctive name, if it were not also 

 applied to the lesser whitethroat, the garden 

 warbler, and often to the blackcap as well. The 

 name of blackcap in country districts is more often 

 given to the great, cole, and marsh tits than to 

 the grove-haunting song-bird, which is shyer and 

 escapes general notice ; and in other places it is 



