HISTORIC INVASIONS OF FIELD MICE. 7 



all possible assistaiico. They set out in their niioration westward. 

 From the river Pengiii they go southward and about the middle of 

 July reach Oshotska and Judoma, a tract of amazing extent. They 

 return again in October. The Kamtschatkans are greatly alarmed 

 at their migrations, as they presage rainy seasons and an unsuccessful 

 chase; but on their return, expresses are sent to all parts with the 

 good news." " 



Visitations of voles have not been infrequent in the histor}^ of 

 the Old AVorld. The earliest records of them are in the Bible ^ and 

 in the works of Homer, Herodotus, and Aristotle. So serious did 

 the Greeks consider plagues of field mice that in their pantheism they 

 had a mouse god (Apollo Smintheus), who was invoked to avert the 

 evil. 



Invasions of field mice have not been rare in Great Britain and 

 the Eurasian continent. Blasius records serious outbreaks on the 

 Lower Rhine in the twenties.'^ Brehm, quoting Lenz, gives an 

 account of one in 1850 and of another in Rhenish Hesse in 1861. 

 Brehm himself observed hordes of the animals in 1872 and 1873 on 

 the sandy plains of Brandenburg and in the rich corn lands of Lower 

 Saxony, Thuringia. and Hesse.** The chroniclers of England — Hol- 

 inshed, Stow, Childrey, Lilly, Fuller, and others — record outbreaks 

 of mice in Essex and Kent, 1581, and again in Essex in 1648 and 1660. 

 Later plagues occurred in parts of P^ngland in 1745, 1754, 1814, 1825, 

 1830, and 1803-1807. Severe outbreaks took place in Scotland in 

 1825, 1804, 1870, and 1892, the last so serious in its effects upon the 

 sheep industry that the British Board of Agriculture appointed a 

 special committee to investigate it. The report of this committee * 

 is the most complete and important contribution to our knowledge of 

 field mice thus far published. 



A large portion of Hungary was devastated by field mice in 1875 

 and 1876. Li 1875 they were observed to be very numerous in cer- 

 tain districts, and by the spring of 1876 they fairly swarmed in 

 cultivated fields, so that the peasants " doubted whether they had 

 sprung from the earth or fallen from the clouds." They devoured 

 gi'ain, roots, and growing vegetation — corn, potatoes, turnips, and 

 luctTu. Ill the fall they attacked vineyards and shrubl)ery, and 



o History of Quadrupeds, by Thomas Pennant, .3d edition, vol. IT, p. 195, 1793. 



6 "And the cities and fields in the midst of that rejjion itroduced mice and 

 tlH*r(> was f^roat confusion and (icarfli in llic city." I Sanuiel, v., (I (Vulgate 

 version.) 



'■ Xatur^'escliiclitc dcr Siiu^^ctliicrc 1 »cu(sclilands, vun Joliann llcinrich Bla- 

 sius, ].. .'?Sn, 1857. • 



<i \. K. Brehm, Thierlcl)cn : S;iu.L,'cthicn>, vol. 2 ]>. .">90, 1S77. 



'Report of the DcparlMicntal Committee on a I'laj^ue ot Field Voles in Scot- 

 land, London, 1S9;;. 



