THE LONG-TAILED FIELD MOl?SE. 601 



applies to the nest of the White-bellied Field Mouse, and White, 

 of Selbome, notices the same fact mth reference to the harvest- 

 mouse. How the young are suckled seems marvellous, unless 

 the conjecture be correct that the female opens a fresh aperture 

 in the nest each time she visits her young, and closes it again 

 when she departs. 



" The parents show considerable affection for their young. If 

 a nest be exposed by the mower they do not desert it, but on the 

 contrary endeavour to conceal it from observation as well as they 

 can, by drawing round it the neighbouring grasses and plants." 



The same writer remarks that he has several times caught the 

 Short-tailed Field Mouse in the hedges while " bat-fowling '' at 

 night for small birds. He has also found that when the Mouse 

 eats hips, it nibbles off one end and extracts the seeds, rejecting 

 the husks as uneatable. Man, however, acts in just the reverse 

 manner, rejecting the seeds with their cottony envelopes, and 

 eating the sweet husk, or sometimes boiling it up with sugar and 

 making it into a conserve. 



The cherry-stones are mostly obtained through the agency of 

 blackbirds, thrushes, and other feathered fruit lovers. These birds 

 pluck the cherries, often leaving the stones adhering slightly to the 

 stalks, or dropping them on the ground. In the fomer case the 

 stones are sure to be flung down when the legitimate owner 

 gathers the fruit, so that the Mouse who is fortunate enough to 

 live in a cherry-growing district is sure of a winter stock of food. 

 Several hundred cherry-stones are sometimes placed in a single 

 storehouse, affording sustenance to several mice. 



The animal eats them in a pecidiar manner. Instead of split- 

 ting them open by using the chisel-edged teeth or wedges, after 

 the manner of schoolboys opening nuts and peach-stones with 

 their pocket-knives, the Mouse nibbles off one end of the stone 

 so as to make a little hole, and through this small aperture it 

 contrives to extract the solid kernel 



The Long-tailed Field Mouse or Wood Mouse (Mus sylva- 

 ticus) also makes a winter nest, in which it lives, but to which 

 it does not absolutely confine itself, making several nests in the 

 course of a season, and selecting such spots as appear to please 

 its fancy at the tima Mr. Briggs remarks that he has known 

 one of these mice to make a nest in three days. 



One species of Field Mouse sometimes does good service to 



