194< Supposed Connection of Meteoric Phenomena, 



has enquired only respecting the species of which the mice 

 ill question may be, 1 adduce his statement on another ground. 

 He says that the mice did prodigious damage over a wide 

 extent of country in May and June, 1832; that their increase 

 was extraordinary; and their disappearance sudden, in the 

 spring of 1833. Now, in July, 1833, a similar irruption of 

 mice occurred in the county of Galway, in Ireland, doing 

 similar damage to the crops of grass and corn ; and, as far as 

 I have ascertained, the circumstances in both cases are alike. 

 These irruptions of mice are not without their parallel in 

 former years ; and every tourist along the Rhine must have 

 heard of the famous Hatto II., archbishop of Mentz, 

 who, in time o^ famine, refusing to sell or give corn to his 

 people, fled for safety to a castle (der Mausethurm) on the 

 river, where myriads of mice, pursuing the avaricious prelate, 

 devoured him alive. Notwithstanding the lucubrations of 

 Leitch Ritchie, Esq.*, we must consider the tradition (even if 

 derived, as I believe, from a fact relating to the natural his- 

 tory of the mouse) properly defined, by Klein [Rheinreise vo?i 

 Mainz vis Koln, p. 57.), a " fantasie," and by Fischer, 

 (Neueste7' Wegweiser, p. 99.), a " lacherliche monchslegende '* 

 (a ridiculous monkish legend). Nevertheless, the " Mause- 

 thurm" has its counterpart in Pliny, if we may trust that au- 

 thor. " M. Varro," says he, " autor est, a cuniculis suiFossum in 

 Hispania oppidum, a talpis in Thessalia : ab ranis civitatem 

 in Gallia pulsam, ab locustis in Africa : ex Gyaro Cycladum 

 insula incolas a murihus fugatos, in Italia Amyclas a serpen- 

 tibus deletas. f {Nat. Hist. viii. 29.) The same writer ob- 

 serves elsewhere : — " Supra cuncta est murium foetus : . . . . 

 ex una genitos cxx. tradiderunt ; apud Persas vero prsegnantes 



et in utero parentis repertas Itaque desinit mirum esse, 



unde vis tanta messes populetur murium agrestium: in quibus illud 

 quoque adhuc latet, quonam modo ilia midtitudo repente occidat. 

 Nam nee exanimes reperiuntur, iieque extat qui murem liyeme 

 in agro effoderit. Plurimi ita ad Troadem proveniunt: et 

 jam inde fiigaverunt incolas. Proventus eorum siccitatihus tra- 

 dunt."% {Nat. Hist, x.65.) Arnobius, also, who seems to have 



* Heath's Picturesque Annual for 1833, p. 95. In this work, the 

 " heroes," after Schreiber, are converted into " rats ; " but " bolche 

 nitchevo," as the Russians say, "that's nothing!*'' See Lyell's Geol. 

 (vol. ii. p. 94.), on migration of rats. 



f " M. Varro tells us that a town in Spain had been undermined by rab- 

 bits ; another, in Thessaly, by moles ; that the inhabitants of a city in 

 France were driven from it by frogs ; and, by locusts, the people of one 

 in Africa; that the natives of Gyarus, an island of the Cyclades group, 

 had been driven out by mice ; and Amyclae, in Italy, destroyed by serpents." 



X " The prolificness of mice exceeds every thing : . . . 120 young are said 

 to have been brought forth by one; but, in Persia, even the unborn young 



