56o MURID^— MICROMYS 



coloured Field Mice for Harvest Mice (see also W. Evans, Ann. Scott. 

 Nat. Hist., 1898,47).! 



According to E. R. Alston {MS., in his copy of Bell), the Harvest 

 Mouse is generally but locally distributed in the eastern lowland 

 counties of Scotland, but it is absent from the west and north 

 of Scotland. 



The Harvest Mouse does not occur in Ireland, although it has 

 been recorded thence in error on several occasions. Thus Bell's 

 record (ed. ii., 2gi,fide Kinahan) has been shown by A. G. More^ to be 

 an error. A nest of young mice found in a thistle in a field of oats in 

 Co. Donegal (S. A. Brenan, Irish Nat., 1898, 125) may have been that 

 of the Lesser Shrew (Scharfif, loc. cit.). Thompson (iv., 1856, 15) also 

 has a note from Shane's Castle Park, Co. Antrim, of a nest described 

 as suspended between stalks of wheat, but this could not have been 

 the nest of a Harvest Mouse. 



Distribution in time, and origin : — The species is quite unknown 

 as a fossil ; its absence from Ireland, and its present absence from 

 much of England and Scotland, together with its wide distribution 

 in the East, indicate that it is an Eastern species which has arrived 

 in western Europe only at a comparatively recent date. 



Description : — The Harvest Mouse is characterised by its exceed- 

 ingly small size, elongated and slender form, and by its bright 

 coloration. The head is narrow, the snout short and blunt. The eyes 

 are black, quite small, and less prominent than in the Field Mouse. 

 The ears are relatively small, rounded and thick ; they extend barely 

 half-way to the eyes when laid forwards : in each the antitragus is 

 developed as a triangular valve about 2 mm. high, capable of completely 

 closing the meatus ; this valve is clothed with a tuft of long hairs, 

 nearly 5 mm. in length, and the general surface of the ear, both within 

 and without, is clothed with shorter and finer hairs. In the hands the 

 pads are arranged as in the Field Mouse, but the posterior two are 

 relatively larger, closely approximated or even fusing together along 

 the median line behind, and forming with the small thumb a single 

 tubercular mass opposed to the balls of the fingers ; in addition, a small 

 free pad is present external to that at the base of the fifth finger 

 (Winge). The feet are long and narrow (though relatively a little 

 broader than in the Field Mouse) ; the soles are naked ; the pads are like 

 those of A.sylvaticus in number and arrangement, but the two posterior 

 ones are relatively larger and of more elongated form, the sixth being 



* Edward's description appears to leave little room for doubting that his 

 specimens were really Harvest Mice ; Taylor's suggestion does not seem probable, 

 inasmuch as young Field Mice of the size indicated would be in the dull juvenal 

 pelage (see the table at p. 515 above). 



^ In J. E. Harting, Zoologist, 1895, 420. 



