150 Wild Life in a Southern County 



alarm across a road does the same. The motion ceases 

 the moment mouse or weasel reaches the turf, which is 

 rarely quite level. 



The brown field-mouse may be found in the orchard 

 hedge, but is so unobtrusive that his presence is hardly 

 observed. There are many more of these mice in the 

 hedges than are suspected to be there ; their little bodies 

 slip about so near the surface of the brown earth, the 

 colour of which they resemble, that few notice them unless 

 they chance to be calling each other in their shrill treble. 

 Even then, though the sound be audible, the mouse is in- 

 visible ; but you cannot sit quiet in a hedge very long in 

 summer without becoming aware of their presence. Some 

 of the older branches of the hawthorn bushes, bent down 

 when young by the hedge-cutter, are nearly horizontal and 

 free for some part of their length of twigs. The mice run 

 along these natural bridges from one part of the hedge to 

 the other. 



Last spring I watched a mouse very busily engaged 

 sitting on such a branch, about a foot above the bank, 

 nibbling the tender top leaves of the ' elite ' plant. The 

 ' elite ' grows with great rapidity, and climbs up into the 

 hedge; this plant had already pushed up ten or twelve 

 inches, so that the mouse on the branch was just about on 

 a level with the upper and tenderest leaves. These he 

 drew towards him with his fore feet and complacently 

 nibbled. When he had picked out what suited his fancy 

 he ran along the branch, and in an instant was lost to 

 sight on the bank among the grass. 



The nests of the ' harvest trow ' — a still smaller mouse, 

 seldom seen except in summer — are common in the grass 

 of the orchard (and in almost every meadow) before it is 

 mown. As the summer wanes their dead bodies are fre- 



