4i6 MURID^— EVOTOMYS 



Occasionally it enters houses, and robs cupboards ' and 

 gardeners' stores ; ^ but this does not seem to happen so often 

 in the British Islands as in more northern countries — as in 

 Norway, where in winter the habits of the local Bank Mice 

 resemble those of the House Mice, which they accompany to the 

 very roof.^ In Norway also it accumulates stores of pro- 

 visions. As stated above, the latter habit does not seem 

 to be universal in this country, but Mr English once 

 excavated five Bank Mice, and ninety-three cob-nuts, the 

 latter all intact, and tightly packed together. In Britain it 

 sometimes obtains both food and shelter by constructing a 

 winter nest of short dry straw or grass in swede or potato 

 clamps.* 



It is a hardy mouse, and is not confined to its retreat in 

 times of frost or snow.^ Mr Adams found it the only species 

 coming to traps at a temperature of 14° Fahrenheit. 



The period of gestation was ascertained by Mr Robert 

 Drane to be twenty-eight days, in a captive female which pro- 

 duced a second litter that number of days after isolation with a 

 previous one.'' 



The young, which at birth are about as advanced in 

 development as those of other mice,^ are born during a long 

 sexual season, which in the south of England lasts regularly 



' One caught in a cupboard at Vaynol Old Hall, Bangor, N. Wales, in September 

 1904, was forwarded to me by H. E. Forrest ; Dalgliesh has also sent me a similar 

 note ; and see also Rope, Zoologist, 1898, 503. 



^ J. Sutton, yi7z^r«. cit., 1888, 23. 



^ In the Yukon region W. H. Osgood found E. dawsoni always about log-cabins 

 {North Amer. Fauna, No. 19, 1900, 34). In Kamchatka E. wosnessenskii frequents 

 dwellings and accumulates stores of food often carried from quite a distance ; thus 

 sheltered, it rears young throughout the year, but on the tundra is inactive in winter ; 

 N. G. Buxton, in J. A. Allen, Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat Hist., 31st March 1903, 147-8. 



■* G. Roberts, Zoologist, 1866, 206 ; H. A. Macpherson, /(?«r«. cit., 1894, 149, and 

 Lakeland. 



"•' R. J. Cuoninghame took specimens (British Museum) of the Norwegian E. 

 glareolus siiecicus in January and February, on two or more feet of snow, in cold 

 weather ; and in that country Evotomys tunnels under the snow (Collett). More 

 probably it objects rather to wet than to cold weather. In this connection it may be 

 well to contrast the shrews, whose voracious appetite and rapid digestion compel 

 activity in all weathers to avoid starvation, with the mice, which, although large 

 eaters, have a slower digestion, and can exist much longer without food. 



^ Thus confirming F. Lataste's " law " ; see above, p. 375 ; had she not been 

 nursing, the young would presumably have been born on or about the 21st day. 



"' Lataste, 382. 



