(JNAWINCI ANIMALS RODENTS 145 



disappeared ; but tlie empty burrows and passages 

 awakened a much more dismal feeling than when 

 they swarmed with life. People said that the whole 

 race had suddenly disappeared from the earth, as if 

 by magic. Many may have perished from a devasta- 

 ting pestilence; and many may have been devoured 

 by their fellows, as happens in captivity ; but people 

 also spoke of the innumerable hosts that had swum 

 across the Rhine at several places in the open day- 

 light. No extraordinary increase was noticed over 

 a wide area, but they seem to have disappeared 

 everywhere at the same time, without reappearing 

 elsewhere. Nature must have put a stop to their 

 inordinate multiplication at the same period. It was 

 fine, warm autumn weather, apparently favourable 

 to them to the last moment. ^^ 



In 1822, in the district of Zabern, 1,570,000 voles 

 were caught in fourteen days ; and in the district of 

 Nidda, 590,427 ; and in that of Putzbach, 271,941. 



In 1856 a plague of voles in the district between 

 Erfurt and Gotha destroyed crops, the value of which 

 amounted to over £4,000. Again in 1872 and 1873 

 the voles visited Lower Saxony and Thuringia, where 

 half the harvest was destroyed and thousands of 

 acres Avere left untilled. In 1892 Thessaly was de- 

 vastated by voles, but a far more serious outbreak 

 occurred in France in 1904 in the district between 

 the Loire and the Gironde. ^' In the Northern part 

 of Charente, where the plague is most serious, the 

 damage done by the voles is said to be enormous. 

 The surface of tlie ground is riddled with holes like 

 a sieve., Not only will it be impossible to feed the 



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