Mice. 185 
look too short for the speed he is going. This peculiar 
motion gives them when in haste an odd appearance. 
In a less degree, a mouse rushing in alarm across a 
road does the same. The motion ceases the moment 
mouse or weasel reaches the turf, which is rarely quite 
level. 
The brown field-mouse may be found in the 
orchard hedge, but is so unobtrusive that his pre- 
sence is hardly observed. There are many more of 
these mice in the hedges than are suspected to be 
there ; their little bodies slip about so near the surface 
of the brown earth, the colour of which they resemble, 
that few notice them unless they chance to be calling 
each other in their shrill treble. Even then, though 
the sound be audible, the mouse is invisible; but you 
cannot sit quiet in a hedge very long in summer with- : 
out becoming aware of their presence. Some of the 
older branches of the hawthorn bushes, bent down 
when young by the hedge-cutter, are nearly horizontal 
and free for some part of their length of twigs. The 
mice run along these natural bridges from one part 
of the hedge to the other. 
Last spring I watched a mouse very busily en- 
gaged sitting on such a branch, about a foot above 
the bank, nibbling the tender top leaves of the ‘clite’ 
plant. The ‘clite’ grows with great rapidity, and 
climbs up into the hedge; this plant had already 
pushed up ten or twelve inches, so that the mouse on 
the branch was just about on a level with the upper 
