576 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [Vou. XXXII. 
great many. It forms a large part of the menu of several of 
our mammals, as the wild cat, house cat, fox, marten, weasel, 
mink, raccoon, skunk, and opossum. The larger species of 
snakes, the bullfrog, and some of the turtles also devour them. 
Strike the meadow mouse from the food list of the tens of 
thousands of animals which devour him in the eastern United 
States, and the problems of the economic zoélogist would mul- 
tiply an hundred fold. 
The worst charges proved sgainst him are: (a) the under- 
mining and tunneling of artificial water barriers; (0) the 
destruction of a small amount of grain and vegetables not sea- 
sonably harvested or housed ; (c) the consumption of a very 
small percentage of grasses which would have been utilized by 
the farmer ; (d) the gnawing of the bark of fruit trees in severe 
winter weather.! The insignificance of these items compared 
with the value of the mouse as a tiller of the soil, a destroyer 
of weeds, utilizer of otherwise useless grasses, and a food supply 
for two-thirds of our carnivorous birds, mammals, and reptiles, 
is apparent. Exterminate the mouse, and the changed food 
relations resulting therefrom would cause the extermination of 
many most beneficial animals and the conversion of others into 
pests, to the greatest detriment of agriculture. Let us not 
forget, on the other hand, that any marked decrease of the ani- 
mals which prey on the meadow mouse is equally to be depre- 
cated, attended as it might be with similar consequences to the 
“vole plagues” of the old world. To maintain the balance of 
power between these neutralizing agencies, in the changed 
conditions imposed by advancing civilization, is the real prov- 
ince of economic natural science. 
In 1894, the year following his publication of the volume on 
‘‘ Hawks and Owls,” Dr. A. K. Fisher contributed an essay 
on “Hawks and Owls from the Standpoint of the Farmer,” to 
the Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture. 
r. A. K. Fisher, in a recent answer to my inquiries regarding the pees 
economic value of the meadow mouse, denies that it is anything but a pest, an 
states that its destruction of trees in nurseries is alone sufficient to eer it. 
I have since corresponded with two prominent Pennsylvania nurserym , Mr. 
Thomas Meehan and the Wm. H. Moon Co., both of whom deny that pe have 
suffered by this mouse to any extent. 
