It has many of the habits of the campagnol, but its diet is more diversified, including insects, worms and snails, and it is accused of eating young birds. A rather startling incident, showing its insect-eating proclivities, was witnessed by my son, Theodore Wood, some years ago. In those days he was an enthusiastic lepidopterist, and was in the habit of going out at night “treacling” for moths. This process is simple in principle, though rather difficult in practice. Many moths are irresistibly attracted by the odour of treacle mixed with the newest and coarsest rum. The moth-hunter, therefore, mixes treacle and rum, and at night paints with the mixture the trunks of suitable trees. Attracted by the odour, the moths fly to the bait, swallow the sweet mixture greedily, and become so intoxicated that they either fall or can be picked off the tree with the fingers. Now, the “treacler” has many enemies. Slugs of the most portentous dimensions descend from their hiding places in the tree, and absorb the treacle just as if they were so many hungry leeches fastening on a plump and thin-skinned patient. Toads sit in a row round the trunk of the tree, waiting to snap up any moth that falls. The bats soon learn the value of a treacled tree, and sweep rapidly by it, whipping off the pre-occupied moths as they pass by. On one occasion my son caught sight of a bank-vole, which had climbed up the tree and was taking its share of the spoil. All the voles are admirable climbers, as indeed is necessary, in order to enable them to gather the corn and fruit of the hawthorn and wild rose. Their paws grasp the corn stems or tree twigs as if they were hands like those of the monkey, and they run about the slender branches of the hedges and shrubs that line the banks like monkeys among the trees of their native forests. Like the campagnol, they make globular nests of grass, which may be found among the herbage of the bank by those who know where and how to look for them. * * * * * Just as the ordinary farmer lumps together half-a-dozen species or so of small birds, under the comprehensive title of “sparrows,” so do most people consider that every animal which labours under the misfortune of being small in dimensions, brown in colour, and having a tail appended to its body, must be either a rat or a mouse, according to its size. No one can be familiar with the banks of any brook without being acquainted with the pretty little WATER-SHREWS, which, like their relatives of the land, are almost invariably considered as mice, although, as we shall presently see, they are not connected in any way with the creatures which they superficially resemble.