148 THE OREGON SPORTSMAN 



Lane county. Oregon. The mouse was very different from any 

 other known species. Collectors have since searched eagerly 

 for it, but until recently in vain. I have often set traps over 

 the branches of trees, on cushions of tree moss and on logs high 

 above the ground, but to no purpose. 



In 1907 Dr. William Bebb of Los Angeles showed me sev- 

 eral specimens of the tree mouse that he had taken in Oregon 

 at a lumber camp. The men were chopping down tall Douglas 

 spruces and he watched when the trees came down and caught 

 several of the stunned or crippled mice as the nests were crushed 

 by the fall. I tried to persuade Dr. Bebb to publish a note on 

 this, but have never seen any further reference to his interesting 

 discovery. The main new fact which he made known in regard 

 to the habits of the mouse was that they lived in the tops of tall 

 trees, often 100 feet or more from the ground. This made col- 

 lecting a good series of specimens seem more difficult than ever, 

 and it is no great wonder that from 1890 to 1914 no more speci- 

 mens, were secured for the National Museum collection. 



In 1914 Alfred Shelton of the University of Oregon, 

 secured two immature specimens of this rare mouse and 

 learned to recognize their bulky nests in the tree tops and 

 pointed out a number of them to me. Many of the nests were 

 in unclimbable trees, but we found a few in trees that were not 

 too large to be half encircled by our arms and with the aid of 

 Shelton 's climbing irons we went up them and examined the 

 nests, selecting the most promising and taking turns in climbing 

 and watching from below. The work was hard and we were 

 scratched and covered with pitch, but to me the game was worth 

 all it cost, for at last it was my good fortune to find a nest 

 with a mouse in it. This nest, or house, as it might better be 

 called, was about 80 feet from the ground on three radiating 

 branches close to the trunk of a Douglas spruce. It was a bulky 

 mass about two feet wide by one and one-half feet high and 

 evidently many years old. The twigs of which it was largely 

 composed had settled in a half decayed and earthy mass as solid 

 as a muskrat's house, and beginning at the top a tiny burrow 

 wound down spirally through the structure to one after another 

 of the four or five fresh, clean little nests of green spruce leaf 



