522 



MURID^— APODEMUS 



/ 



i/ 



as to be barely audible to human ears.^ The sense of smell 

 is probably acute also, and perhaps the principal guide in the 

 search for food. 



In disposition it is gentle and inoffensive, slow to retaliate, 

 so that it rarely bites unless roughly handled. Extremely 



timid, it cannot, perhaps on 

 account of poor sight, be 

 called shy, for it may some- 

 times be observed from a 

 close distance, or caught with 

 the hand,^ and no animal is 

 i i more easily trapped. The 



Field Mouse lacks the objec- 

 y tionable odour of the House 



Mouse, so that, like the Dor- 

 mouse, it ought to prove a 

 suitable pet ; but, although 

 extremely beautiful, it is not 

 as intelligent as the House 

 Mouse, and, while easily 

 fed, frequently breeding, 

 and sometimes exceptionally 

 friendly, it does not always 

 become so tame as to repay 

 the trouble expended on it. 

 Some, however, have found 

 it very attractive, and the 

 late Dr W. E. Leach" is 

 said to have allowed several 

 to run about freely on his 

 breakfast table. It sometimes enters houses, perhaps by climb- 

 ing the creepers, but this habit is more characteristic of the 

 Yellow-necked Field Mouse.* 





i' 



n 



it 

 It 



w 



Fig. 85.- 



-Spoor of Field Mouse in Snow. 

 (From a sketch by L. E. Adams.) 

 Hind feet (dark) on top of prints of fora feet (lighter). 



^ G. T. Rope, Zoologist, 1887, 203. 



3 Eliza Brightwen, More About Wild Nature, 1892, 58 ; and L. E. Adams in 

 Millais, 189. * Bell, ed. ii., 294 ; see also, Eliza Brightwen, op. cit., 120. 



* See William Thompson, Nat. Hist. Ireland, iv., 15, for Ireland (Belfast); 

 W. Evans for Scotland (Edinburgh district); G. Rope, Zoologist, 1887, 206 (visits 

 dairies for milk) ; Millais, 189 ; Coward and Oldham ; Jenyns, Observations in 

 Natural History, 1846, 74. 



