422 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



gillivray in Fifeshire was composed of dry blades of grass in the 

 midst of a tuft of Air a ccespitosa. In Essex Dr. Laver reports 

 that he finds these small mice more often in corn stacked in the 

 fields than in that which is carted home, but that when the 

 harvest is carried they find their way to the ricks, evincing a 

 partiality for wheat, but eating oats and barley too when wheat 

 fails them. In Suffolk Mr. Rope has found them as often in 

 stackyards attached to farm buildings as in outlying stacks, and 

 this has been the writer's experience in West Sussex. After the 

 stacks have been threshed, they often remain in the straw 

 throughout the winter. 



That the Harvest Mouse, during the summer months, con- 

 structs for itself a bird-like nest suspended amongst the stalks 

 of growing plants has of course been long known — in fact, ever 

 since Gilbert White, in 1768, announced the fact in a letter to 

 Pennant as above noticed. He also remarked that " in the 

 winter they burrow deep in the earth and make warm beds of 

 grass, but their grand rendezvous seems to be in corn-ricks, into 

 which they are carried at harvest. A neighbour," he adds, 

 " housed an oat-rick lately, under the thatch of which were 

 assembled near a hundred, most of which were taken, and some 

 I saw." 



A curious divergence of habit in this little creature when in 

 its winter haunts has only of late years been announced. The 

 late Prof. Schlegel, of Leyden, with whom it was once the writer's 

 privilege to spend a week, discovered the interesting fact that it 

 sometimes builds a winter nest, into which at the cold season it 

 retires. A very pleasing account of his observations on this point 

 was published in the periodical * Notes from the Leyden Museum,' 

 vol. iii. pp. 23-28 (1881), and will be found reprinted in ' The 

 Zoologist' for that year (pp. 233-237). 



The locality in which this discovery was made is situated at a 

 distance of about two miles from Leyden, in the neighbourhood 

 of the Castle of Endegeest, celebrated as having served as a 

 refuge to the philosopher Descartes after his exile from France. 

 Here, on the right-hand side of the road leading to the village of 

 Bynsburg, not less celebrated for its abbey than for being the 

 residence of Spinoza, there is to be found a ditch some quarter 

 of a mile in length and six paces in width. Part of the border of 

 this ditch was grown over with reeds. Close observation soon 



