362 MUSCARDINID^— MUSCARDINUS 



various seasons and individuals to from 39 to 43, 25 to 35, 24 to 37, 

 29 to 37, and 21 to 28. 



Distingtiishing characters: — The peculiar colour and the pattern 

 of the teeth are absolute distinctions amongst British mammals. 



The Common Dormouse is a timid animal of gentle 

 disposition. Although capable of extreme activity when 

 frightened, it is naturally of a somewhat sluggish temperament, 

 wearing an air of lethargy until roused, and sleeping away half 

 the year in the more or less complete torpidity of hibernation. 

 It has thus come to be regarded as a type of drowsiness. 

 Shakespeare makes Fabian say — "to awake your dormouse 

 valour " ; ^ and in our own day it figures in Lewis Carroll's 

 Alice in Wonderland. 



It is most at home near the edges of dense coppices and 

 thickets,^ in the undergrowth of which it builds its nest ; and 

 it is in creeping about in such surroundings that it exhibits 

 its greatest adroitness, an adroitness quite unequalled by the 

 agile Harvest Mouse, and scarcely surpassed by the Squirrel. 

 It does not seem to have many enemies, but Mr E. G. B. 

 Meade - Waldo informs me that it is preyed upon by 

 owls.* 



It is popularly supposed to feed chiefly on hazel nuts, and 

 its technical name, avellanarius,'^ is based on this belief. But 

 it eats also wild fruits and berries,^ acorns, seeds, grain, and 

 certain leaves.® 



In eating a hazel nut it removes about one- third of the 



1 Twelfth Night, iii., 2. 



^ Oxley Grabham has sent me a note of a remarkable habitat in Yorkshire— a 

 plantation in the middle of a moor. 



^ The first specimen of Dyromys milleri (Thomas, Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., 

 April 1912, 394-395), a small dormouse of Central Asia, was picked up by J. H. Miller 

 after having been dropped by a crow. 



* From Abella, now Avella, a town in Campania, Italy, abounding in nuts, hence 

 Abellana nux= the filbert. Some writers suppose that dormice are unable to open 

 ripe hazel nuts, and in this respect experiences are contradictory. 



* Especially of the mountain ash, when coming to eat which it may be snared with 

 nooses (A. E. Brehm). 



^ In captivity it likes plums, apples, strawberries, and particularly cherries ; in fact, 

 all except very acid fruits, together with salad, Indian corn, almonds and nuts, but 

 usually refuses meat, cheese, bread and milk, or eggs (Fernand Lataste, " Recherches 

 du Zooethique sur les Mammif^res de I'ordre des Rongeurs," Act. Soc. Linn., 

 Bordeaux, xl., 1887 ; L. E. Adams, MS.) ; lettuce, sorrel, and groundsel (Mayne Reid, 

 The Naturalist in Siluria, 1889, 102). 



