412 MURID^— EVOTOMYS 



Mouse. On the other hand, although quick and sprightly, a 

 capable climber and a fair jumper, it is in all these respects 

 quite inferior to the Field Mouse. 



As an instance of its powers of running, Mr Rope reminds 

 me of the speed with which it will cross a road ; and Mr English 

 knew one to escape from a square biscuit-tin, with sides 9^ in. 

 high, that being about the limit of leap attainable by the 

 species, though 7 in. is well within its average powers.^ The 

 same writer finds it gnawing through wood as rapidly as a 

 House Mouse. 



It is active at intervals throughout the day as well as at 

 night; its most favoured haunts being hedgerows, railway-banks, 

 old walls, woods ^ or gardens, especially where the presence of 

 roots, stones, heaps of sticks, or recesses makes the construc- 

 tion of runs easy. It usually prefers warm, dry, sunny situa- 

 tions, yet frequently inhabits wet localities. It swims well, and 

 has been known to escape pursuit* by diving, or to recover 

 grains of maize from the bottom of a feeding-trough.* Charles 

 St John^ seems to have met with it living on sandhills by the 

 seashore, where he suggested that its food is grass seeds and 

 dead fish.® 



' F. Head {Zoologist, 1888, 24) credits it with springs of a foot upwards, and a 

 similar distance was recorded for its leaps from shelf to shelf of a greenhouse by G. 

 Dalgliesh (Journ. cit., 1907, 302). 



- Hence its rufous dorsal mantle is thought by some writers to be protective, as 

 harmonising with a background of dead leaves (Ernest Thompson Seton, i, 509). 

 If so, it is curiously different from the tints of other small mammals, such as shrews, 

 which live amongst similar surroundings. Arising as it does from a dull-coloured 

 juvenile pelage, and being characteristic of the genus in many varying climates and 

 environments, it seems difficult to say more than that it is an indefinite colour, the 

 evact tint of which depends on the chemistry of the ancestors of the genus, and now 

 to a limited extent on climatic environment rather than on escape from enemies. 

 In some exotic species the colour has not been perfectly developed. The North 

 American E. gapperi is sometimes dichromatic, having a phase in which the rufous are 

 replaced by sooty tints (G. S. Miller, Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., April 1897, 16). 

 E. proteus. Bangs, of Labrador, shows wide colour-variation, the back varying 

 from mouse-brown to bright rufous (Outram Bangs, Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash., xi., 

 pi. iv., 17th September 1897, 239). Some forms are very brown, e.g., Thomas's E. 

 frater of Thian-Shan. E. smithii of Japan has the young dark slate-coloured. 



3 In Norway; Robert CoUett. * William Borrer, Zoologist, 1887, 462. 



'' Natural History and Sport in Moray, ed. 1882, 257. 



" The specimens from which J. C. D. von Schreber described his glareolus were 

 caught amongst beds of sea grass {Elymus"). In similar situations on Bering Island, 

 Kamchatka, E. wosnessenskii accompanies the grass to its seaward limit, and in such 

 localities L. Stejneger and I sometimes found it very plentiful. 



