CHAPTER III 
THE MEADOW-MOUSE AND ITS 
MISCHIEF 
Waite the alien rats and mice are working 
costly mischief about the house, stable, and 
granary, their native cousins, the wild mice, 
are doing vast harm in garden, orchard and 
field. Naturalists count 200 or more species of 
these animals in North America, but we need 
concern ourselves with only certain types, 
since, from the farmer’s point of view, the ac- 
tions of all are much alike, and the principal 
damage is caused by those of a single group— 
the short-tailed meadow-mice of the genus 
Microtus. To this genus alone David BE. Lantz 
has devoted a treatise of 64 pages in the pub- 
lications (Bulletin 31) of the U. S. Biological 
Survey from which, as before, I shall quote 
freely. He prefaces this treatise with the 
statement that the mice of this genus alone’ 
cause an average annual damage to American 
farmers of not less than $3,000,000. It is this 
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