LITTLE HARVEST MOUSE. 
105 
all occasions. They were very gentle, allowed themselves to be taken 
into the hand, and made no attempt to bite, or scarcely any to escape. 
The young, when born, were naked and blind, but in a very few days be- 
came covered with hair, and at a week old were seen peeping out of their 
nests. We did not discover that the female dragged the young, attached 
to the teats, in the manner of the white-footed mouse. We placed a fe- 
male. in a cage with a male of the white-footed mouse : they lived on tol- 
erably good terms for six months, but produced no young. We then placed 
the same female with the male of the common mouse. The latter imme- 
diately commenced fighting with our little pet, and in the morning she 
was found dead in the cage, bitten and mutilated in various places. 
This to us is a rare species ; after a search of twenty years we have 
obtained only a dozen specimens from the fields. The nests, which we 
have oftener seen than their occupants, were placed on the surface of 
the ground among the long grass, composed of soft withered grasses, and 
covered over in the manner of the nest of Wilson’s meadow mouse. We 
have also seen the nests of this species under brush-heaps and beneath 
the rails of fences, similarly constructed. 
We doubt whether this species is of much injury to the farmer. It 
consumes but little grain, is more fond of residing near grass fields, on 
the seeds of which it subsists, than among the wheat fields. We have 
observed in its nest small stores of grass seeds— the outer husks and 
other remains of the Broom grass {Andropogon dissitiihrurn)--n\^o that ot 
the Crab grass {Digitaria sanguinalix,) and small heaps of the seeds 
of several species of paspalum, poa and panicum, especially those of 
panicurn Italicum. 
The specimen from which this description was taken was a little 
the largest of any we have seen. It was a female captured on the 
loth December, and containing four young in its matrix; we presume 
therefore that this species, like the field mice in general, produce young 
several times during the summer. 
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. 
We have met with this species sparingly in South Carolina along the 
seaboard, and received it from Dr. Barratt, of Abbeville, S. C. We pro- 
cured a specimen in Ebenezer, (Georgia,) where the inhabitants stated 
they had never before observed it. A specimen was sent to me by our 
friend Mr. Ruffin, who obtained it in Virginia. If we have not inad- 
vertently blended two species, this animat can be traced as far to the 
north-east as the State of New- York, several having been procured in 
traps on the farms in the vicinity of the city. 
VOL. II. — 14 . 
