and spirals all about, runs the delicate tracery of the meadow mice
trails. No leapers these, as are the white-footed and jumping mice, but
short-legged and stout of body. Yet with all their lack of size and
swiftness, they are untiring little folk, and probably make long journeys
from their individual nests.

As far north as Canada and west to the Plains the meadow or field mice are
found, and everywhere they seem to be happy and content. Most of all,
however, they enjoy the vicinity of water, and a damp, half-marshy meadow
is a paradise for them. No wonder their worst enemies are known as marsh
hawks and marsh owls; these hunters of the daylight and the night well
know where the meadow mice love to play.

These mice are resourceful little beings and when danger threatens they
will take to the water without hesitation; and when the muskrat has gone
the way of the beaver, our ditches and ponds will not be completely
deserted, for the little meadow mice will swim and dive for many years
thereafter.

Not only in the meadows about our inland streams, but within sound of the
breakers on the seashore, these vigorous bits of fur find bountiful
living, and it is said that the mice folk inhabiting these low salt
marshes always know in some mysterious way when a disastrous high tide is
due, and flee in time, so that when the remorseless ripples lap higher and
higher over the wide stretches of salt grass, not a mouse will be drowned.
By some delicate means of perception all have been notified in time, and
these, among the least of Nature's children, have run and scurried along
their grassy paths to find safety on the higher ground.

These paths seem an invention of the meadow mice, and, affording them a
unique escape from danger, they doubtless, in a great measure, account for
the extreme abundance of the little creatures. When a deer mouse or a
chipmunk emerges from its hollow log or underground tunnel, it must take
its chances in open air. It may dart along close to the ground or amid an
impenetrable tangle of briers, but still it is always visible from above.
On the other hand, a mole, pushing blindly along beneath the sod, fears no
danger from the hawk soaring high overhead.

The method of the meadow mice is between these two: its stratum of active
life is above the mole and beneath the chipmunk. Scores of sharp little
incisor teeth are forever busy gnawing and cutting away the tender grass
and sprouting weeds in long m