CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER 7. RODENTIA 
Ml 
THE LONG-TAILBD FIELD-MOUSE. 
with which it is often confounded, it being four to five inches long, and the tail nearly the length 
of the body. Its color is a yellowish-fawn above and white below ; the eyes are large and prona- 
inent; the ears large. It lives in the woods and fields in summer, but in winter resorts to the 
granaries. As the common mouse sometimes dwells in gardens, and even in fields and forests, so 
this species occasionally takes up its abode in houses. It is a most destructive species, and a 
great pest to the horticulturist, the agriculturist, and the planter. It is very prolific, bringing 
forth from seven to ten at a birth, and is not always stinted to one brood in a year. The hoards 
that it collects in its subterranean retreats — which are sometimes the results of its own labor, but 
more frequently excavations which it finds ready made, but which it enlarges, such as those under 
roots of trees, old mole-runs, &c. — are enormous for the size of the animal, and Pennant is of 
opinion that the great damage done by hogs in rooting up the ground is caused chiefly by the 
search of the swine for the concealed treasure of the Field- Mouse. It is an inhabitant of the 
whole of temperate Europe and parts of Asia. 
THE HAUVESr MOUSE. 
The Harvest Mouse, Mus mimitus, or Mus messorius — the Hat Nain of the French — the 
smallest of mice, and perhaps the very minutest of mammalia, an English half-penny weighing 
Vol. L— 56 
