664 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXVI 



devour the grain with greater facility. I saw many whole fields completely 

 devastated so much so as to prevent the farmers paying their rents." In 

 1912 Capt. G. C. Shortridge, one of our Mammal Survey Collectors was 

 collecting in the Dharwar District, the district to which Sir Walter EUiot 

 refers, and wrote of the mettades which are now called soft furred rats 

 Millardia meltada as being " confined almost if not entirely, to the black 

 soil country, where it is probably the chiefly destructive to cotton crops. 

 These rats, in favourable seasons, increase in such enormous numbers as to 

 eat down the crops of an entire district. While at Dharwar I never found 

 the species so plentiful as Tatora or Gunomys, although there is no doubt 

 that at times it becomes a plague." 



Writing of the plague in 1878-79 Mr. Fairbank says that the Indian 

 Gerbille Tatera indica was the primary culprit. He describes how this 

 plague extended over several thousand square miles principally in the 

 Ahmednagar and Sholapur Collectorates and the adjoining Native States. 

 This plague was first noticed in the end of 1887 when the Rabi (winter) 

 crops began to ripen. At first writes Mr. Fairbank " stalks were cut down 

 here and there in the fields but more were cut as days went on. And 

 afterwards fields were suddenly attacked and destroyed in a few nights. 

 When food became scarce where they were, the rats gathered their forces 

 and an army of them invaded fields that had not been harmed before and 

 quickly destroyed them." Besides the Indian Gerbille the soft-furred 

 Field Rat was also, in all probability, responsible for a good deal of the 

 damage as Mr. Fairbank remarks that " In some places they did not cut 

 down the stalks but climbed them and gnawed off the ears of grain" a habit 

 as we have seen from Sir Walter Elliot's paper he noticed in the latter 

 animal in Dharwar. 



The Southern Mole Rat Gunomys kok too was probably responsible for 

 some of the damage, but Mr. Fairbank says only in small numbers. Ap- 

 parently then in the Ahmednagar district the rat plague was caused by the 

 following species in the order given : — Indian Gerbille, Soft-furred Field 

 Rat and Southern Mole Rat, while in the Dharwar District Capt. Shortridge 

 considered the order of destructiveness to be as follows : — Indian Gerbille, 

 Southern Mole Rat, Soft-furred Field Rat, though in Walter Elliot only 

 mentions a plague of the last named. 



In 1909 the Society was' sent two examples of the Sind Mole Rat, 

 Gunomys sindicus which was said to be a regular plague in the Indus Delta. 



As regards the breeding habits, I may briefly mention the following 

 facts. The Indian Gerbille generally makes its hole in or about a hedge or 

 bush, while the Southern Mole Rat burrows are found right in the open, 

 along side a bund or, as often as not in the jungle but they are always 

 easy to tell by the mole like mounds thrown up outside the burrows. The 

 soft-furred field rat on the other hand is found in old walls, heaps of stones, 

 but principally in cracks in the sunbaked soil. These difl^erences in habits 

 may account for what appears to be difl'erent times of year when the plagues 

 take place. Sir Walter Elliot's record seems to point to a plague in the 

 middle or end of the monsoon, while as Mr. Sedgwick has pointed out 

 according to official records the plagues take place as a rule in the cold 

 weather, two years after the failure of the monsoon. 



The 1826 plague is attributed by Sir Walter Elliot to the failure of the 

 early rains and consequent great increase in first broods of rats, many, 

 which are as a rule drowned at that season, escaping. That many rats are 

 drowned by heavy rains is shown by Mr. T. Davidson, Avho writing to 

 Mr. Fairbank says from Hadha in the Sholapur Collectorate on May 20th, 

 1879, says "there was a grand slaughter of rats on Monday night and 

 Tuesday. It rained 2-6o inches and in the morning the whole black soil 



