FIELD MICE, or VOLES, any wild mouse, dwelling in fields and open places may be called a field mouse; but the name applies more strictly to the robust, short-tailed mice of the arvicoline group of the fatting Murithr, representatives of which occur throughout the north temperate zone and are known in Great Britain as °Voles.* the 'saine 'group Iiichides the lemmings, muskrats and other vole-like mice dwelling in the woods. The common fieldi mice of the United States and Canada are of the genus Microtus and the common eastern °meadow-mouse* (M. pennsylvanicus) is disc tributed over the whole continent, showing many local varieties in color and form. It is five and one-half inches long, with a tail one and one-half inches, grayish-brown with chestnut tinges, blackish on the spine and hoary below. A near relative of the upper Mississippi valley is the prairie meadow mouse (M. austerus), which is larger and more uniformly gray; and another is the southern pine-mouse (M. pinctorum), whose coat is rusty brown, short, dense and silky. Other species are distinguished on the Pacific coast. These mice feed mainly upon seeds and bark and often do vast damage in grain fields, where they not only eat or shake down a large percentage of the crop, but occasionally over run the country in vast hordes suitably de scribed as ((plagues." This has happened re
peatedly in Europe, where the offending specie! was the very common field-vole (M agrestis), whose inroads have sometimes nearly produced famine in southern Russia. In winter these pests of the farmer are likely to nibble the bark from young fruit-trees until they have been fatally girdled. These mice dwell in shal low burrows, or make nests of grass in various hiding places, being especially fond of working their way into grain sacks and storage-cellars. They pass the winter in these retreats, tained by a store of seeds, etc., but hibernating only during the severest weather. The best way to combat them is 'not to kill off their natural enemies, the hawks, owls, harmless snakes and small carnivores. To the unwise destruction of these is due most of the °plagues* of mice. Consult Audubon 'and Bachman, 'North American Quadrupeds' (1846); Godman, 'Natural History' (1834); Kennicott's papers in the Annual Report of the United States Department of Agriculture for 1857; Ingersoll, 'Wild Life of Orchard and Field' (1901) ; and Stone and Crane, 'Ameri can Animals.'