5o8 MURID^— APODEMUS 



Field Mouse may pass for the Dormouse (see Bolam, Naturalist, 

 1913, 41). "Bean Mouse" (sometimes "Beaner") of Pennant 

 (Thompson, iv., 1856, 15) is a word known in Kent, Surrey, and 

 Sussex, from its habit of attacking stores of beans and peas (L. E. 

 Adams, MS!). 



(Celtic): — Scottish Gaelic — the species of mice are not usually 

 distintinguished, and luch-fheoir or luch-an-fheoir =" gmss mouse" is 

 applied indiscriminately in Scottish Gaelic (C. H. Alston). Irish — Luch 

 fheoir =" grz.ss mouse" of Clare Island (Colgan, Proc. R. Irish Acad., 

 xxxi., 4, 22, 191 1). Welsh — Llygoden y maes or Llygoden goch=¥i&\d 

 Mouse; Llygoden ganolig= Common Mouse. Manx — Lughvarghey, 

 Lugh sliean (Millais). 



History and status: — A species of Apodemus was described by 

 Gesner {Quad., 1551, 830) as AIus agrestis major. Although many 

 descriptions were published in the eighteenth and the early part of the 

 nineteenth centuries, a knowledge of the status of these mice cannot be 

 said to have existed prior to the work of Hensel (1856). The status 

 has been discussed above under the genus. 



Distribution : — A. sylvaticus is distributed over nearly the whole of 

 Europe and a large part of Asia. Its range extends from Ireland and 

 Iceland to central Asia, and from central Skandinavia and northern 

 Russia southwards to Algiers, Sicily, Crete, the mountains of southern 

 Persia, and northern India. In the Alps, according to Blasius, it 

 ascends to 6000 feet. Fatio (p. 212) records it from a height of 1900 

 metres in the Bernese Oberland, and from 2500 metres in the 

 Engadine ^ : he says that in the bad season it retires from such stations 

 to chalets and the cellars of houses. In the Altai Mountains it is met 

 with up to about 7000 feet ; in the mountains of Persia it has been taken 

 at about 5000 feet ; and it occurs in the Himalayas up to a height of 

 11,500 feet. 



Miller says : " This is the most abundant and universally distributed 

 of European mammals. Except in cities, at the extreme north, on the 

 highest mountains, and perhaps in some parts of the Mediterranean 

 region, it is probably more numerously represented in individuals than 

 any other species.'' 



The typical sub-species, .^4. s. sylvaticus, which is the common British 

 form, ranges from Ireland across central Europe eastwards for an 

 unknown distance into Russia ; and from central Sweden and Norway 

 to the south of France and northern Italy. It occurs also in Iceland, 

 but is generally regarded as an introduction there. Thienemann 

 {Reise im Norden Europas, ii., 153) described the Icelandic Field Mouse 

 as a distinct species, Mus islandicus, but in habits and character this 

 animal does not appear to differ from typical sylvaticus (see Steenstrup, 



^ These high Alpine Mice were probably ^z/zW/iJ, see p. 546 below. 



