204 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



are often out of their burrows beneath the snow to 

 shake down the seeds from upstanding weed stalks. 

 The snow has just melted from one of my pasture 

 slopes, a pasture which was not cropped last season, 

 and the ground there is now a matted tangle. of 

 dead grass and weed stalks. Looking at it care- 

 fully, I find that everywhere on the ground are the 

 little runways of the mice, about an inch wide and 

 apparently the same height, to judge by those 

 places where the animals had to cut them through 

 matted grass instead of snow. When, a month ago, 

 that pasture looked like a white carpet utterly de- 

 void of life, it was still inhabited. Under the snow 

 the mice were moving about freely, in their long, 

 branching tunnels. 



The white-footed mouse, also called wood-mouse 

 and deer-mouse, belongs to the long-tailed division. 

 He has a longer tail, longer legs, longer ears, and, 

 like all the long-tailed native rats and mice, does 

 not burrow. Indeed, in habits he more or less 

 resembles the squirrel, making his nest in a hollow 

 root or log, even in a hole some way up a tree, or an 

 appropriated bird's nest. He is the most attrac- 

 tive of all the large family of rats and mice (rats, 

 by the way, being only larger mice, and in no way a 

 different species). Especially in winter, the deer- 

 mouse is a pretty fellow, for then his fur is soft and 

 long, snow-white underneath, fawn color on top, 

 and he has big, black, timid, friendly eyes, magnif- 

 icent whiskers, and ears not unlike a Boston ter- 

 rier before the shears have been applied. He lives 

 largely on nuts, berries, seeds, and what meat 

 scraps he can procure, and he stores food for the 



