the boat, rowed the rat fairly down, and I captured him by hand in mid-stream after one of the most sporting little hunts imaginable. Very good fun may be had in the early summer where there are wide ditches or brooks infested by rats by ferreting them out of their holes into the water, and running after them as they swim away, armed with a long-handled punt landing-net, and scooping them up.
26. Water Vole. Microtus amphibius, Linn.
Bell Arviola amphibius.
Commonly known as the water rat. Abundant in the Thames and its tributaries, as well as the other streams of the county. It is much more at home in the water than the brown rat, and it is far harder to ' pin ' one in shallow water with a punt-pole or boathook, or to scoop one up in a landing-net as described under the brown rat. A peculiarity about the water vole when so captured and put into a cage is that each one in turn stands on the defensive (like the Norwegian lemming), and fierce battles result, totally at variance with the normal conduct of brown rats under the same circumstances. The latter take matters wonderfully submissively unless by accident one is caged that has received some slight hurt, when for a few minutes it falls foul of all and sundry whom it may encounter. Water voles are mischievous to some classes of vegetation; at Great Marlow we had several magnolias killed at different times by the stems being gnawed by them; and to embankments, such as artificially-made sides of ponds or canals, by their burrowing allowing the water to escape. They are however distinctly an ornament on any piece of water, and afford a pretty sight when swimming, or sitting on a water-lily leaf or little accumulation of floating vegetable flotsam and jetsam, while they busily gnaw away at some edible find.
For breeding, water rats to a great extent leave the big river in favour of its backwaters and tributary ditches and small streams. Pairing takes place in the water. I have a note of this taking place on 23 April. The male remains, I believe, with his mate, and assists to take care of the young. During June young voles may bo seen very commonly making little excursions in the ditch or other stream in the banks of which they were born. The skin of the water vole is extremely pretty. I have a large antimacassar, or small rug, made of picked skins, all killed during December or January, early in the ' seventies,' and still in good preservation. Only one or two persons out of some dozens to whom I have shown the rug have guessed the source.
17. Field Vole. Microtus agrestis, Linn.
BellArvicola agrestis.
Commonly known as grass mouse. Not nearly so abundant as the bank vole, though five and twenty years ago, or even a good deal later, I should have confidently asserted the contrary. They seem more apt to frequent the neighbourhood of human habitations than the bank vole. On i July 1884 I was brought a white but not albino specimen alive, which had been captured the previous day in a hay field close on the Great Marlow side of Razzler Wood (Harleyford). A male example allowed itself to be captured by hand in one of my fields on 28 September, owing no doubt to the fact that it was infested with numerous ticks. Mr. F. H. Parrott has reared the young of this species in captivity, under a long-tailed field mouse.
28. Bank Vole. Evotomys glareolus, Schreber.
BellArvicola glareolus.
Very abundant, and probably much on the increase, the number of its natural enemies (the Mustelidæ and raptorial birds, 'and in lesser degree magpies, jays, etc.) being continually and rapidly on the decrease. The plentiful beech-mast crop of 1900 brought millions of this species and the long-tailed field mouse to the woods in this neighbourhood, whence of course they spread to the neighbouring fields and homesteads. From that autumn until well into the following summer, when walking through a wood after sunset, it would prove positively alive with swarms composed of these two species; a rustle of dead leaves, or sometimes the mouse itself, catching one's ear or eye every half dozen yards or so. The first two or three of many which I have kept in captivity died within a short time, and I was jumping to the conclusion that they were difficult to keep under artificial conditions, until I discovered that from my ignorantly supposing that they required soft food, their incisors had overgrown, and the poor little voles had starved. A regular supply of nuts, maize and other hard food entirely put an end to the high death-rate.
29. Common Hare. Lepus europaus, Pallas.
BellLepus timidus.
Thanks to the Ground Game Act, hares have now very little chance of maintaining a footing except in favoured places where a landowner keeps a fairly large acreage in his own hands. Here hares may still be preserved and a considerable number accounted for; and these oases of comparative security
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