THE LONG-TAILED FIELD-MOUSE. . 617 



eats hips, it nibbles off one end and extracts the seeds, rejecting 

 the husks as uneatable. Man, however, acts in just the reverse 

 manner, rejecting the seeds with their cottony envelopes, and eat- 

 ing the sweet husk, or sometimes boiling it up with sugar and 

 making it into a conserve. 



The cherry-stones are mostly obtained through the agency of 

 blackbirds, thrushes, and other feathered fruit - lovers. These 

 birds pluck the cherries, often leaving the stones adhering slight- 

 ly to the stalks, or dropping them on'the ground. In the former 

 case the stones are sure to be thrown down when the legitimate 

 owner gathers the fruit, so that the Mouse who is fortunate 

 enough to live in a cherry-growing district is sure of a winter 

 stock of food. Several hundred cherry-stones are sometimes 

 placed in a single store-house, affording sustenance to several 

 mice. 



The animal eats them in a peculiar manner. Instead of split- 

 ting them open by using the chisel-edged teeth or wedges, after 

 the manner of school-boys opening nuts and peach-stones with 

 their pocket-knives, the Mouse nibbles off one end of the stone 

 so as to make a little hole, and through this small aperture it con- 

 trives to extract the solid kernel. 



The Long-tailed Field-mouse or Wood Mouse {Mm sylvat- 

 icus) also makes a winter nest, in which it lives, but to which it 

 does not absolutely confine itself, making several nests in the 

 course of a season, and selecting suck spots as appear to please 

 its fancy at the time. Mr. Briggs remarks that he has known one 

 of these mice to make a nest in three days. 



One species of Field-mouse sometimes does good service td 

 mankind, through its habit of storing up its winter stock of pro- 

 visions. Lately in the country about Odessa vast armies of mice 

 were seen, and evidently did much damage. Not only did they 

 eat the crops, but they swarmed into the houses in such numbers 

 that traps could hardly be set fast enough, twenty or thirty being 

 often taken in a single day. 



Hurtful though they were in some senses, they nevertheless 

 had their uses. The country is liable to the attacks of locusts, 

 which in that year happened to be particularly numerous. These 

 destructive insects, as is the case with many of their order, lay 

 their eggs inclosed in capsules, something like the well-known 

 egg-cases of our too common cockroach. The mice were very 

 fond of the egg capsules, and not only devoured them as part of 



