122 



THE SMALLER QUADRUPEDS CONSIDERED. 



873. Glires {Dormice). — The common squirrel feeds on birds, acorns, nuts, 

 and other fruits ; and though he is very ornamental in woods, he should be 

 but sparingly admitted into pleasure-grounds. The dormouse lives on similar 

 fruit to the squirrel, and builds in the hollows of trees. The field-mouse 

 may be caught and subdued in the same manner as the shrew. The field- 

 mouse in the Forest of Dean had become so destructive in 1813, that after 

 trying traps, baits with poison, dogs, cats, &c. with little success, at last the 

 plan of catching it by holes was hit upon. These holes were made from 

 eighteen inches to two feet long, sixteen or eighteen inches deep, about the 

 width of a spade at the top, fourteen or fifteen inches wide at the bottom, 

 and three or four inches longer at the bottom than at the top. The object 

 was to get the bottom of the hole three or four inches wider every way than 

 the top, and the sides firm, otherwise the mice would run up the sides and 

 get out again. The holes were made at twenty yards apart each way, over a 

 surface of about 3200 acres : 80,000 mice were very soon caught, and the 

 ground was freed from them for two or three years. As many as fifteen 

 have been found in a hole in one night ; when not taken out soon, they fell 

 on and ate each other. These mice, we are informed, used not only to 

 eat the acorns when newly planted, but to eat through the stems of trees 

 seven and eight feet high, and an inch and a half in diameter : the part 

 eaten through was the collar, or seat of life. (Billingtons Facts on Oaks and 

 Trees, S^c. p. 43.) The black and the brown rat are omnivorous, and the 

 latter takes occasionally to water and swims readily. Both are extremely 

 difficult to extirpate, and the various modes of entrapping them are too 

 numerous and well known to require description here. The hare feeds 

 entirely on vegetables, and is very injurious where it finds its way into 

 gardens and young plantations. It eats the bark of several trees, and is 

 particularly fond of that of the Laburnum. Various mixtures have been 

 recommended for rendering the bark of young trees obnoxious to the hare, 

 and an ointment composed of powdered sloes and hogs'-lard is said to prove 

 effectual. Stale urine of any kind, mixed up with any glutinous matter 

 that will retain it on the bark, has also been recommended. The rabbit is 

 more injurious to gardens than the hare, because it is much less shy, and 

 much more prolific. It may be deterred from injuring the bark of trees by 

 the same means as the hare, and from eating pinks, carnations, and other 

 evergreen herbaceous plants, by surrounding them with a tarred thread sup- 

 ported by sticks at the height of six or eight inches from the ground ; or by 

 a fence, formed of wires about eighteen or twenty inches long, placed upright, 

 with the tops pointing outwards, the wires being connected by one horizontal 

 wire at the bottom and another at the middle. When hares or rabbits are 

 to be excluded from pleasure-grounds, a wire-wove fence is requisite ; and 

 where it is intended that the eff"ect of the irregularity of the margin of the 

 plantation should not be impaired by the formality of a fence the lower part 

 of which is as close as basket-work, and consequently more like a fence of 

 boards painted green, than an invisible fence, which it is commonly called, 

 the mode is to have three parallel lines of fences, two or three yards apart. 

 The outer fence may consist of iron posts and rods, no closer together than 

 is necessary to exclude horses, cattle, and deer ; the second fence should be 

 such as will exclude sheep ; and between this fence and the outer one there 

 may be several large bushes, or low trees, with branches reaching to within 

 the height of a sheep from the ground. The third fence need not be more 



