164 Mice. 



in the cattle yards adjoining the house. More rarely 

 the stoat does the same. A weasel may frequently 

 be found prowling in the highway hedge. When a 

 weasel runs fast on a level hard surface — as across 

 a road — the hinder quarters seem everj' now and 

 then to jump up as if rebounding from the surface ; 

 his legs look too short for the speed he is going. This 

 peculiar motion gives them when in haste an odd 

 appearance. In a less degree, a mouse rushing in 

 alarm across a road does the same. The motion 

 ceases the moment mouse or weasel reaches the turf, 

 which is rarely quite level. 



The brown field-mouse may be found in the 

 orchard hedge, but is so unobtrusive that his pres- 

 ence is hardly observed. There are mau}' more of 

 these mice in the hedges than are suspected to be 

 there ; their little bodies shp about so near the 

 surface of the brown earth, the color of which they 

 resemble, that few notice them unless they chance to 

 be calling each other in their shrill treble. Even 

 then, though the sound be audible, the mouse is 

 invisible ; but you cannot sit quiet in a hedge very 

 long in summer without becoming aware of their 

 presence. Some of the older branches of the haw- 

 thorn bushes, bent down when young by the hedge- 

 cutter, are nearly horizontal and free for some part 

 of their length of* twigs. The mice run along these 

 natural bridges from one part of the hedge to the 

 other. 



Last spring I watched a mouse very busil}^ en- 

 gaged sitting on such a branch, about a foot above 

 the bank, nibbling the tender top leaves of the 

 ' chte ' plant. The ' elite ' grows with great rapidity, 



