60 THE MAMMALS, REPTILES, AND FISHES OF ESSEX.
diet is composed largely of insects, they probably do more
good than harm.
Mus sylvaticus, Linn. Wood Mouse.
Common everywhere in Essex. A gentle little creature,
and a delightful home pet, but one of the most destructive of
its race in fields, gardens, or plantations. Plots of newly-
sown peas or corn are especial objects of its attention. It is
rarely found in houses, barns, or ricks, much preferring the
shelter of a hedgerow or wood.
The colour of different specimens varies considerably in
its range of shades of red. Albinos are occasionally taken.
Of all our native Mice, this is the most easily tamed. An
occasional specimen is more than usually friendly, and may
be induced to come into the hand within a month of capture.
I generally have some of these little creatures in confinement.
They are extremely friendly one with another, and a large
number, even of complete strangers, may be kept together.
This gregarious way of living seems natural to the Wood
Mouse, for fourteen or fifteen, and even more, may some-
times be dug out of one burrow. They work in company in
storing provisions, bunches of growing barley or other corn
often showing clearly where their storehouse has been.
Nothing in the way of vegetable food seems to come
amiss to this very abundant mouse.
Mr. J. E. Harting gives (Trans. Essex Field Club, vol.
i., p. 92), a quotation from Joshua Childrey's Britannia
Baconia (London, 1660, 8vo, p. 100), where he says that in 1580
an extraordinary swarm of Field Mice appeared in Dengie
hundred, in Essex, which ate up all the roots of the grass.
It may be questioned whether the chief offender in committing
these depredations was not the Short-tailed Field Vole
(Arvicola agrestris), under which further mention of this
plague of mice will be found (see p. 66).