Indigenous Icelandic Terrestrial Mammalian Fauna. 453 



question, whether there is anything in the whole statement 

 which cannot be applied to the mouse known to come from 

 Iceland, which, as I have already stated, was named by 

 Thienemann Mus islandicus, but which must certainly be 

 regarded as a variety of our wood-mouse, Mus sylvaticus, Linn. 

 But even this question I find myself in a position to answer 

 decidedly in the negative. Everything agrees precisely with 

 what we know of the wood-mouse. 



In the first place I must remark that the geographical dis- 

 tribution presents no hindrance, as the wood-mouse is spread 

 over the whole of Scandinavia, even up to Finmark, and 

 therefore occurs under climatal conditions which at any rate 

 are quite as severe, if not considerably more severe than 

 those of Iceland. 



In the second place, this mouse lives upon a food of the 

 same nature, namely a mixture of fruits, nuts, and berries, 

 and likewise collects great stores of them. 



In the third place, it digs large store-chambers, dwelling- 

 chambers, and impurity-pits for itself, exactly as described by 

 Henderson (vide suj)ra, p. 449) from the statements of the 

 Icelanders. 



As the last-mentioned circumstance is apparently a main 

 point in the foundation of Murray's opinion, and is therefore 

 in his work made prominent by italics, I shall not refrain 

 from appealing to definite evidence ; and for this purpose I 

 reproduce, in their own expressions, what I find given upon the 

 subject by two of the most accessible writers, Schreber and 

 Nilsson, whilst I shall afterwards add a third piece of evi- 

 dence from an author with whom I have not the same right 

 to assume that Murray was acquainted. 



In Schreber's ' Die Saugethiere,' vol. iv. p. 653, it is said 

 of the wood-mouse (Mus sylvaticus, Linn.) : — 



" They are very fond of taking up their abode under thickets 

 and ruins. Their holes are from one-half to a whole ell 

 under the earth, and consist frequently of two chambers, in 

 one of which is the store of provisions, and in the other the 

 mouse lives alone. The approaches are a perpendicular and 

 oblique tube, in front of the opening of which no cast-out 

 earth is to be observed. 



" It feeds both upon corn and upon all sorts of wood-seeds, 

 especially nuts, acorns, and beech-mast. Of these it carries 

 in great provisions." 



Nilsson says of the same mouse, in his ' Skandinavisk 

 Fauna,' pp. 348 & 349 :— 



" In fields, woods, orchards, and the borders of fields it 

 digs itself holes and galleries in the earth, or makes use of 



