Indigenous Icelandic Terrestrial Mammalian Fauna. 455 



that makes a nest in the manner described by Henderson." 

 It may serve to excuse him, however, that the English faunists 

 have possessed only an imperfect acquaintance with the sub- 

 terranean home of the wood-mouse. We will here conclude 

 with two of these which are particularly cited by Murray. 



T. Bell, in his ' History of British Quadrupeds,' says ex- 

 pressly of Mus sylvaticus, Linn. : — " Each one laying up a 

 winter store in its subterranean retreat, the devastations com- 

 mitted by it are considerable." And further : — " Its retreat is 

 formed underground, either in holes formed by its own labour 

 or more frequently in small natural excavations under the 

 trunks or roots of trees, enlarged by themselves, or in the de- 

 serted runs of the mole. The quantity of food which is here 

 hoarded is astonishing : it consists of acorns, nuts, corn, and 

 various seeds, or even roots, &c." 



Pennant also, in his ' British Zoology,' had already stated 

 the same ; for at p. 103 he says, with the addition of two lines 

 from Virgil's Georgics : — " They feed also on nuts, acorns, 

 and corn, forming in their burrows vast magazines of winter 

 provisions. 



" Ssepe exiguus mus 

 " Sub terris posuitque doruos atque horrea fecit." 



It is perfectly clear that both were well acquainted with 

 the enormous provision-chambers or "granaries" which the 

 mice form, whilst they did not know much about their dwell- 

 ing-place, galleries, &c. But even their provision-cham- 

 bers also lead Murray into some confusion, inasmuch as at 

 p. 266 he refers the mouse (" the long-tailed field-mouse ") 

 to which the passages just quoted from Pennant and Bell 

 apply to the Arvicolince, probably because he calls these 

 " voles " or " field-mice," and in a moment of inattention for- 

 got that the " long-tailed field-mouse " of the above-men- 

 tioned authors is a true mouse and Mus sylvaticus 1 Linn. 



By these observations I think all doubt is removed with 

 regard to the question how far the reports of the Icelanders as 

 given by Olafsen and Henderson can apply with any proba- 

 bility to any other Icelandic mouse than the one which we 

 already know from Iceland under the name of Mus sylvaticus, 

 Linn., or M. islandicus, Th. After this, Murray's map lxxix. 

 p. 270, which represents the geographical distribution of the 

 species of mice which live in the open, will have to be altered. 



But as Murray's view is the clear expression of the thought 

 that there probably lives in the interior of the country another 

 mouse (an Arvicoline form, and most likely a lemming), which 

 has hitherto escaped observation, and as, at any rate, in a letter 



