CHAPTER XXVII. 



THE DEER MOUSE, WITH NOTES ON OTHER RODENTS. 



(Peromyscus leucopus: Rodentia.) 



EW of the smaller mammals of this country are better- 

 known to the frequenter of our fields and forests than 

 the common little White-footed mouse. This very 

 pretty little rodent is likewise known in various locali- 

 ties by the name of the Deer mouse or sometimes as the 

 Field mouse. It has all over the world a perfect host of 

 relatives, both near and remote, and even in the United 

 States alone the number of species of ferine mice are many, 

 not a few of which belong to the same genus that contains 

 our present subject. It has only been within comparatively 

 recent years, however, that many of the types and forms of 

 our mammals of the size of a Deer mouse have come to the 

 knowledge of science, and this has been greatly facilitated by 

 the use of a variety of small spring traps, which are set in num- 

 bers in the runways made by these little animals in the localities 

 they haunt. By this means naturalists have taken numerous 

 mice, shrews, and their allies, hitherto unknown to them, and the 

 systematic use of such traps in the unexplored regions of foreign 

 countries will undoubtedly result in the capture of a perfect 

 legion of small mammals, the presence of which, in former ex- 

 plorations, has been never so much as suspected by the collector. 

 A Deer mouse is but a little larger than a specimen of our com- 

 mon House mouse, and is at the same time a very different ap- 

 pearing animal, being of an ochre brown above, with all the lower 

 parts and feet pure white. It is from this latter circumstance 

 that it gets its specific name of leucopus. Their ears are rather 

 large, and their eyes are markedly so, and very prominent and 

 bright. Many of the members of this genus have the ears strik- 

 ingly large, but none more so, I believe, than True's mouse, a 

 form first described by the writer in New Mexico some ten years; 

 ago. (See Fig. 110.) Deer mice very rarely get into our dwell- 

 ings, where the House mice have for so many ages been domiciled, 

 but if we repair to any cornfield in the autumn time, and turn 

 over a corn shock or two, we are pretty sure to find among the 

 various species of mouse thus taken by surprise, a Deer mouse or 



