82 AN ECONOMIC STUD? OF FIELD MICE. 
Mice eat celery put up in the garden. They also eat roots of grass if there 
is a heavy snow on the ground during the winter. 
— Lewisburg, TJnion County. Pa., Dec., 1880. 
Mice often cause serious trouble in the winter season by girdling fruit trees, 
especially apple and peach trees. They commit depredations on buckwheat 
fields. —Milan. Bradford County. Pa., 1888. 
Our fields are subject to invasions of meadow mice during the winter when 
mulch is on them. A thousand of the mice wintered 1885-80 on a 2-acre straw- 
berry patch. They eat the bark of trees when straw is placed about them 
or snow is on the ground. — Mexico, N. Y., 1886. 
Meadow mice injure dams, banks, drains, and embankments. 
— Gilbertville, N. Y., 1887. 
Meadow mice injure vegetables ; they are especially fond of beets. They 
injure meadows quite seriously when numerous by feeding on grass roots. They 
were extremely numerous in 1885, and ate potatoes in the hills. 
—Little Valley. N. Y.. 1887. 
In some cases I have found a shock of corn with half the corn consumed by 
meadow mice. —Caldwell, N. J.. Nov. 1, 1886. 
The fields are full of mice. They are about the ears of standing corn, while 
that on the ground is mostly eaten. This is surely an invasion of mice. I can 
account for it only because last winter was so mild that all of them survived. 
—Fairfield, Iowa, Nov.. 1889. 
Meadow mice are very destructive to the harvest fields, particularly in the 
shocks. They bite the ears of wheat and cut the twine bands off the sheaves. 
They gnaw young fruit trees in winter, if manure or straw is left close around 
the stem, and they kill the trees. —Willows, Griggs County. Dak.. Dec, 1886. 
Field voles eat wheat, rye, and other cereals, both green and when matured, 
and carry green grain as well as matured kernels into their burrows. They 
sometimes carry a half bushel of grain into a single hole. They damage fodder 
by cutting it. — North Topeka. Kans.. May. 1890. 
In the summer of 1884 we had an invasion of meadow mice [probably Ji. 
townsendi], and they did much damage. They destroyed seeds in the garden 
and ate growing wheat and oats in the spring, sometimes nearly destroying 
entire fields. They played havoc with the early peas and destroyed carrots 
and parsnips in the fall. The summer was unusually wet. The next summer 
was dry. and the mice disappeared. This is the only mouse year we have ever 
had here. During the year nearly all the cats died, apparently from eating the 
mice. They caught and ate them freely and were all affected alike. Some 
vomited more freely than others ; they got puny, refused to eat. and died. 
Since the " mouse year " cats are themselves again. 
— Aumsville, Oreg.. Dec. 1886. 
The bob-tailed mouse is a pest here, eating all kinds of bulbs, lilies, tulips, 
potatoes, etc. — Centerville. Mo.. 1887. 
Meadow mice ruined nearly the entire crop of clover in the winter of 1884-85. 
— Wakeman, Ohio. 1880. 
We are troubled with meadow voles. When we have much snow in winter 
they are very plentiful the next summer. Winter thaws, which leave the fields 
bare of snow, destroy them. They destroy fruit trees by gnawing the bark 
