OF THE UNITED STATES 419 



immediately ran up the tall tree, a feat it performed two or three 

 times, racing up and down, before it was adroitly taken by my 

 boy as it attempted to get out upon one of the broken lower 

 limbs. This specimen is now before me alive, and I take it to be 

 a subadult individual, inasmuch as its fur above is of a dark gray, 

 the color assumed by the coat in the young animals of this spe- 

 cies. In a small box it soon made a fine nest of tow, and seemed 

 to be perfectly content with a little water and a store of yellow 

 corn. The day following its capture I succeeded in getting a 

 very good photograph of my prisoner, and a copy of this is repro- 

 duced here as an illustration to the present chapter. He ran 

 down an ear of corn for me and was just prepared to jump when 

 my faithful camera caught him in the act. 



These mice usually build a nest in some old decayed stump of 

 a tree or other in the fields or forests. It is made principally of 

 the slivers of the bark of the cedar tree, and lined with soft 

 grasses and similar material. They may also use corn silk, or 

 occasionally leaves, and the like. These nests are also built in 

 other localities, as up in some old red cedar tree, or in a vacated 

 hole of w r oodpecker or flying squirrel. When built up in a small 

 tree they have the appearance of a somewhat large, roundish 

 mass of the materials above mentioned, with a small hole in one 

 side for the owner to pass in and out. Not infrequently I have 

 captured these mice, and the four or five young they usually have 

 at a litter, by cautiously climbing the tree and then grabbing 

 the entire nest, being careful to slap my gloved hand over the en- 

 trance hole in so doing. 



In the winter time, after a light fall of snow, if we go into the 

 woods or meadows, it is not hard to find in suitable places tracks 

 upon tracks of these little animals. They lead up some of the 

 trees, or into stumps, or to holes in the snow, where they have 

 gone down for food. They feed principally upon grains and 

 numerous kinds of seeds, and it is said they often hoard up a 

 quantity of corn for consumption during the winter months. Un- 

 like some others of their kin, however, the deer mice never seem 

 to pass fully into a dormant state, and thus hibernate during the 

 cold part of the year, for we find evidences of their activity at all 

 seasons. Farmers claim they are the source of a deal of harm in 

 their corn and grain fields ; and yet these very farmers shoot with- 

 out discrimination every hawk and owl that comes in their way. 

 Yet were it not for certain species of these raptorial birds, con- 



