450 MURIDA—AGRESTIS 
a corresponding abundance of beasts and birds of prey, to 
which (and to dogs) the mice are extremely palatable. These 
participate in the exceptional fertility of their victims, and for 
the time being, alter the whole routine of their ordinary breed- 
ing habits. Later, disease arrives to help in the extermination 
of the mice, fertility drops to a minimum, the predatory 
creatures retire or starve, and vegetation resumes its normal 
aspect ; the “plague” is now over. Such occurrences are now 
infrequent in Britain,’ but so recently as 1891-93 the grazing 
lands of southern Scotland were afflicted to an extent involving 
1 Plagues of mice have been known at least from the time of Aristotle 
(Historia Animalium, vi., 37) and Sennacherib, the defeat of whose army owing to 
the destruction by night of their quivers, arrows, and bowstrings was described by 
Herodotus (Euéerpe, ii., 141). A fuller account of these and other classical references 
was given by J. E. Harting (Zoologist, 1893, 187), and see also J. G. Frazer’s Golden 
Bough (cit. supra, p. 374). For Britain there are records of “sore plagues of strange 
mice,” in the following years at least :—1580-81, “an extreme dripping warm year, 
and a mild moist winter” (Childrey), in Danesey Hundred, South Minster, Essex 
(Holinshed’s Chronicle, 1315); 1648, Hundred of Rochford and Isle of Foulness, 
Essex (Childrey, Arzfannica Baconica, 1660, 14). An anonymous correspondent to 
the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1754, 215, stated that Helgay, near Downham Market, 
Norfolk, had a plague every six or seven years, at which times long-eared owls arrived 
regularly to eat the mice, and were venerated almost like the Egyptian ibises. Prior 
to 1813, near Bridgwater, Somersetshire (George Montagu, Supplement to the 
Ornithological Dict., 1813, art. “ Owl”) ; 1812-14 (commencing in 1810 or 1811), Forest 
of Dean, Gloucestershire, and New Forest, Hampshire (Lord Glenbervie, Zoo/. 
Journ., i., January 1825, 433-44); 1825, oak-coppices of Cameron, Dumbartonshire 
(Harting, Zoologist, 1892, 121-38) ; 1836, Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire (Edward 
Jesse, op. cit. supra, p. 418); 1863-64, Rannoch, Perthshire (Harting, of. céz.) ; 
1864-67, woods, Drumlanrig, Dumfriesshire (Harting, of. cz4.) ; 1875- (culminating in) 
76 (ending in May), mainly in portions of Roxburghshire, Selkirkshire, Dumfriesshire, 
and Yorkshire (Sir Walter Elliot, Proc. Berwickshire Nat. Club, viii., 1876-78, published 
1879, 447-68, a paper abstracted for the Arzt. Assoc., 1878), and following winters 
of higher than usual temperature, the frosts being slight or accompanied by snow, 
from February 1871 to January 1876 ; commencing before 1890 and ending before the 
summer of 1893, Dumfriesshire, Roxburgh, Selkirk, Peebles, Lanark, Kirkcudbright 
(Government Report on the Plague of Field Voles in Scotland, 1893, 174, reprinted 
in Zoologist, 1893, 121-38; see also P. Adair, Aum. Scott. Nat. Hist., 1893, 193- 
202; Harting, Zoologist, 1892, 161) ; simultaneously in 1891-92 a plague in Thessaly 
(Report cit, and Harting, Zoologist, 1893, 139-45), and in 1891-93 in Norway (Collett). 
[Plagues are said to have occurred in Essex and Kent in the 17th century, but I have 
not been able to find the original references. | 
The above are well summarised in the Report cit. supra, as also by R. Lydekker ; 
and for mouse plagues generally, see A. Fleming, Amzmal Plagues, Philadelphia, 
1871; V. Bailey, VW. Amer. Fauna, No. 25,116; W. H. Hudson, Waturalist in La 
Plata, ed. 2, 1892, 60-64; S. A. Poppe, Ueber die Méuseplage, 1902 (including a 
bibliography of murine literature); S. E. Piper, Year Book, U.S. Department Agri- 
culture, 1908, 301-8. 
