Saguache Meadow Vole 
97 
It is because of the damage they do at times to nursery 
and orchard stock that voles have come into considerable 
prominence of late years in this country. While the worst 
damage is done in severe winters with deep snows, yet harm 
has been done in mild winters, and even during the summer 
season they occasionally attack trees, showing that it is a 
matter of choice as well as necessity. Perhaps one reason 
that so much notice is taken of the damage inflicted in this 
manner is because it is something much more easily figured 
in dollars and cents than that done in the fields. In the 
winter of 1 901-2 it was estimated that the damage sustained 
by the nurserymen in the vicinity of Rochester, N. Y., was 
$100,000. During the winter of 1903-4 meadows-mice 
destroyed thousands of trees and shrubs of all kinds in the 
Arnold Arboretum, Jamaica Plain, Mass. This was a most 
exceptionally severe winter in that portion of the country. 
Lantz, in an examination of an orchard near Washington, 
D. C, containing 380 apple trees, found that 43 per cent, 
were completely girdled and ruined, 10 per cent, were less 
badly injured, and 47 per cent, were apparently unharmed. 
This was one winter's work for the pests. In an orchard in 
Kansas, examined by the same observer, 5,000 out of 26,000 
trees had been more or less completely girdled before Decem- 
ber 1 8th. This orchard had been neglected and weeds allowed 
to grow rankly in it, and amongst these weeds the mice had 
found most congenial homes and breeding places, and had 
increased greatly in numbers. 
Much information regarding this matter will be found 
m An Economic Study of Field Mice, by David E. Lantz, 
published as Biological Survey Bulletin No. ji, by the U. S. 
Department of Agriculture. The species which does very 
much of the damage is Microtus pennsylvanicus and its 
various subspecies of which modestus is one. 
One reason for the increase in numbers of these animals is 
