352 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
©rcljarlr, <0>arton, Cattm, $zc. 
FIELD MICE—THEIR RAVAGES—IS THERE 
A REMEDY ? 
In our last paper we mentioned some cal¬ 
amitous depredations of the field mice the 
past season, and touched on some remedies 
as preventives against their future mischiefs. 
Any number of preventives have appeared 
in the agricultural papers of past years, but 
on examination, it will be found that had 
they been applied, the experience of the past 
year would have shown them utterly worth¬ 
less. The full habits of the field mouse 
have not been understood by our farmers 
until the current year. It has been supposed 
that the creature simply built a nest on the 
surface of the ground in a bed of dry grass, 
straw, or leaves, or in the roots of stumps, 
under boards, timber or wood, and that from 
these they run out under the snow, or other¬ 
wise, and simply gnawed the bark of the 
trees in their vicinity. Were these the cir¬ 
cle of their habits, and the extent of their 
mischief, the remedies that have been so 
flippantly suggested in the papers, and so 
widely copied, and supposed to be effectual, 
would have answered all purposes. Such, 
however, is unfortunately not the fact. We 
had, ourself, previous to the present year 
entertained the popular notion of the habits 
and operations of the field-mouse. But the 
last nine months experience has taught us 
better. 
To start with, the mouse is an inveterate 
digger in any kind of dry soil short of rock 
itself, and in seamy rock, whether under, or 
above ground, they burrow, intuitively. Of 
course, they live and hold high holiday in all 
sorts of brush-heaps, stacks of hay, grain, or 
poor straw. These suit them best; but for the 
lack thereof, they dive into all sorts of 
banks, and mounds of light dry earth ; they 
burrow under the roots of thrifty, living trees, 
particularly when they are cultivated. Hence, 
we have seen that they have eaten off the 
roots of young trees, and these have fallen 
out of the ground in the spring like a sharp¬ 
ened beanpole. During the past winter they 
have worked through, and up, and down snow 
drifts where they have worked round the 
trees, and beginning a foot or two above the 
ground, barked the trunks up to the crotch, 
and out along the branches. In other cases 
they have cut right through the earth that 
was heaped round the trunks at the root. In 
short, they have attacked the trees and 
shrubbery in all manner of ways under the 
snow, without regard to whether the afore¬ 
said snow was packed, or loose. Another 
fact we have learned. Mice will travel long 
distances under the snow,—miles in all pro¬ 
bability. We knew a field of about fifty 
acres last year, on the rear of which was a 
wood of perhaps twenty acres. The open 
ground was covered with a heavy growth of 
grass, a foot high or more, which had been 
reserved for winter sheep pasture, when the 
ground was bare. About Christmas a heavy 
layer of snow fell upon it and remained all 
winter, and when the snow went off in the 
spring the whole field was sheared as close 
as a newly clipped sheep, the grass all chip¬ 
ped up in fragments on the ground, or made 
into thousands of nests which lay like mole¬ 
hills all about, and full of young mice ; the 
ground was full of subterraneous burrows 
also, while the surface of the field was 
threaded like a piece of gause with the run¬ 
ways and tracks of the vermin. Yet but 
few mice were seen in that field before the 
snow fell! Now, we would like to know 
what foresight or nostrum is to work a pre¬ 
ventive of a curse like this, coming as sud¬ 
denly upon us as the lice, or locusts of Egypt ? 
“ Apply the tar and sulphur, and whitewash, 
and stamp the snow, and poison the brutes,” 
say the Doctors. True, but tar, and other 
pungent applications to the bark are quite as 
apt to kill the trees, as the ravages of the 
mice, while poisoning the creatures is like 
clearing out flies from a dead carcase in 
August with nux-vomica ; and how much 
headway would even an army of men make 
in tramping down snow pretty much every 
other day for a month or two of driving, 
drifting storms like last winter, with the 
mercury below zero'? 
We are as much disposed to publish cures 
and preventives to all evils that can affect 
any of our interests as any one, but the pests 
of the last year are so extraordinary that no 
remedy or preventive on a large scale can 
reach them. Even the immediate grounds 
of the dwelling house, and the continual 
passing through them of its inmates meant 
nothing last winter. We saw trees six or 
eight inches diameter, standing within ten 
feet of the house, that were girdled up to the 
crotch, and currants, gooseberries, rose bush¬ 
es, and every other sort of shrub, amount¬ 
ing in all to thirty or forty varieties, includ¬ 
ing several bunches of wormwood , cut down 
by the mice. Cats, terrier dogs, although 
they caught thousands previous to the fall¬ 
ing of the snow, made no impression on many 
of the grounds invaded by them last winter. 
But like all other evils with which the land 
is occasionally afflicted, this will pass away. 
The usual fall rains if they come, will fill the 
mouse-holes with water. Millions of mice 
will thus be drowned. The work is already 
begun. The late autumnal, or early winter 
freezing of the water, if the ground is bare, 
will finish the survivors who have fled, and 
we shall be again rid of them,and possibly a 
generation of years will pass before we shall 
again be so troubled. We may notice another 
prevalent notion about mice, which is, that 
plowed ground is not affected by them. 
Last winter was an exception. They were 
as plenty in plowed land where stubble,potato 
tops, or anything could be found for them to 
nest in, as in grass land It was no exception 
to their depredations, and many wheat fields 
were injuredby them, and fruit trees destroy¬ 
ed, and during the past summer thousands 
of acres of small grain scattered about, in 
divers fields, were badly cut up by them. 
We record these facts as extraordinary, 
and as putting at defiance all the nostrums 
in the use of which we are prone to indulge, 
as “ effectual remedies ” against occasional 
curses which no human foresight is able to 
successfully combat.—E d. 
SMALL GARDENS. 
WHAT ONE OF THEM PRODUCED. 
With all the progress we have made in hor¬ 
ticulture, the last five years, there are still 
persons, who believe that a garden is not 
profitable. They claim, if they have a gar¬ 
den, that every bushel of potatoes grown in 
it costs them one fifty per bushel, when they 
can buy in the market for half that price ; 
and every ear of corn, squash, and cabbage 
tastes strong of the silver. If we get at the 
facts in the case, we generally find that they 
keep no account current with their gardens, 
and only know that they have paid out sev¬ 
enty-five or a hundred dollars for labor and 
manure, and have only a confused recollec¬ 
tion of a few dishes of succotash, a few dozen 
egg plants, and strawberries and cream last 
June. 
We claim that this is an unfair way of 
judging, and that no man has a right to im¬ 
peach the fruitfulness of the soil in this way, 
until he keeps strict account of expenses and 
products, and convicts the soil of ingratitude 
by its own testimony. We are willing that 
it should stand, or fall by its own deeds, 
when fairly treated. If with labor it does 
not bring in ample returns, let it be written 
down a bankrupt. 
We induced one of our neighbors to keep 
an account of the products of his garden dur¬ 
ing the past season. It is a place hired for 
along series of years, unblest with a fruit 
tree or shrub of any kind. Not even a cur¬ 
rant bush produces its annual crop of cob¬ 
webs and wormy berries upon the premises. 
Probably the garden has not had a hundred 
dollars worth of manure laid out upon it, in 
the last half century. Indeed there was not 
much but the soil there. Nothing can be 
credited to past liberal treatment. It was 
not more than half manured the present 
year, with Peruvian guano, and the contents 
of a pig stye. On the credit side we have 
for green corn sold $40, potatoes, $15, peas, 
$12, cabbage, $10, onions, $5, beans, $7, 
sage, $2, corn fodder, $2, sundry small 
items, $12, making $105, as the amount of 
vegetables sold. No account was kept of 
the amount of vegetables consumed in the 
family. 
The labor was all performed by the man 
himself, without interfering with the busi¬ 
ness upon which he relies for a livelihood. 
The amount consumed in the family was at 
least equal in value to the money paid out 
for the manure, making the amount of veg¬ 
etables sold, the reward of a few days of 
labor that would otherwise have been lost. 
This garden was in a village, and has the 
advantage of a good market. The result 
shows that the soil is ready to honor any 
drafts that may be made upon it. Many vil¬ 
lagers are quite as well situated for making 
gardening pay, and if they cultivated fruits 
instead of vegetables, it would be still more 
profitable.— Ed. 
The charm of good house keeping is in the 
order, economy, and taste displayed in at¬ 
tention to little things, and these little things 
have a wonderful influence. 
