2284 Quadrupeds. 



there by way of ornament. About September, too, numbers are found in stubble-fields 

 (especially if of wheat and oats), which I think repair there to feed on the refuse ears 

 of corn that are left by the gleaners. Each individual appears to burrow himself a 

 hole in the light, soft earth, two or three feet long, for protection and concealment, 

 and issues forth from it to feed as opportunity serves. When clearing such stubbles, 

 I have known the ploughman to disturb a dozen in scuffling half an acre of ground. 

 During frosts they repair to the warm borders of horticultural grounds, and do serious 

 damage to winter-sown peas, by undermining the rows and nibbling the roots, — thus 

 destroying the crop. They are taken in traps, like the common mouse, if baited with 

 a little cheese. Their chief winter support, however, is the long red fruit of the field 

 rose (Rosa arvensis), and they feed chiefly in the night. They mount the twigs of the 

 rose-bushes, and bring away the fruit to some old bird's-nest placed midway in a 

 hedge, which they use as a feeding-station, or, if that be wanting, to the forked part of a 

 branch, and devour it. They reject the husk, and use the flesh and seeds. The lat- 

 ter, which are about twice the size of a common mustard seed, contain a soft white 

 kernel, very acceptable to them, and I have often admired the skill and adroitness 

 they show in extracting it. They have an uniform manner of proceeding, which is 

 by nibbling off the broad end of the shell, and then they clean out the inside very 

 neatly and skilfully, as any one may satisfy himself who will take the trouble to ex- 

 amine the refuse bits which are left on their feeding-stations. As winter approaches, 

 these mice are very partial to withdrawing themselves into a rough bank, overgrown 

 with hawthorn and wild rose-bushes. Here they lie concealed very snugly in holes in 

 the rough bank, lined with soft dry grass and rushes, and subsist as before described, 

 and also on the kernels of haws, to which they gain access as to those of the rose. 

 When labourers have been cutting up an old hedge, I think I have seen more than a 

 bushel of the refuse husks and stones of this fruit, which have been left by these mi- 

 nute animals. In April they may sometimes be observed climbing hawthorn -bushes, 

 in hedgerows, in order to rasp off the young buds from the twigs, which are then ex- 

 panding : to these they seem very partial, and the animal is a pretty object as he eats 

 them on some thick bough or between the fork of a branch. These mice breed with 

 us in great numbers, making their nests chiefly in fields of long mowing grass, which 

 are consequently exposed when the grass is cut. I have met with them from May 

 until November, and the litters vary from five to ten individuals. Sometimes they 

 nest in turnip-fields and are drawn out of the ground with the horse-hoe, and in Sep- 

 tember they are dug up from potato-fields : the latter are favourite nesting-places, — 

 on account, no doubt, of having a good supply of food for the young ones near at 

 hand; and this is one of the numberless instances of the providence and forethought 

 with which animals are gifted. 



A labourer was employed, one autumn, in getting up some mangold-wurtzel 

 (to pit for cows in the spring, as is here the custom). He had pulled one up, and was 

 cutting off the roots, when he perceived a hole, small and round, very neatly drilled 

 into the bulb, and whilst looking at it out jumped a mouse, and almost imme- 

 diately afterwards another. This excited his curiosity, and he cut off the top of the 

 mangold, and was not a little astonished to find in the interior a nest full of young 

 ones. The heart of the bulb was completely nibbled away, in the most regular man- 

 ner, and the hollow scooped out was rather larger than would have admitted an 

 orange. The nest was made of a few dried grasses, which gradually grew finer to- 

 wards the centre, where the young were secreted. The little animals had either eaten 



