124 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. V 
damage done by meadow-mice wherever the two 
exist together. They also do great mischief by 
killing young plants in grain-fields; and, soon 
after the seed is sown, they destroy many of the 
grains, little stores of which may be found col- 
lected in shallow excavations. These are often 
not eaten, and, germinating, astonish and scandal- 
ize the farmer by the appearance of a thick clump 
of plants where he thought he had sown his seed 
quite uniformly. They also dig up grain that has 
just sprouted; and, by examining fields of young 
wheat, oats, etc., spots will be seen where they 
have dug down, guided by the growing blades, 
and taken off the grain. In a nursery, where 
apple-seeds were planted in autumn, I have ob- 
served that, during fall and spring, so many of 
the seeds were dug up by these mice as to leave 
long gaps in the rows of seedlings, the empty 
shells of the seeds being found lying about the 
rows from which they had been taken. They 
congregate in stacks of grain and hay, —some- 
times in exceedingly great numbers, — destroying 
all the lower parts by cutting galleries through 
them in every direction. 
“The greatest mischief done by meadow-mice 
is the gnawirig of bark from fruit-trees. The 
complaints are constant and grievous throughout 
the Northern States of the destruction of orchard 
and nursery trees by the various species of arvi- 
cole. The entire damage done by them in this 
way may be estimated, perhaps, at millions of 
dollars... . This is especially the case at the 
West, where no care is taken to protect the trees 
against them, — careless orchardists allowing grass 
to grow about the roots of their fruit-trees, and 
