64 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF MAMMALIA. 



tensive injury, proving how necessary it is that, in order 

 to keep their numbers within due bounds, an incessant 

 warfare be maintained against them, — a warfare to which 

 birds and beasts of prey are appointed. 



This species is a native of the greater part of Europe, 

 and is common in our island, where its depredations (and 

 in France and in other parts of the Continent the same 

 may be said) have rendered it notorious. It is exclu- 

 sively a tenant of woods, plantations, corn-fields, and 

 meadows; and not unfrequently appears in enormous 

 multitudes. Often is the farmer disappointed of his crop 

 of wheat, the newly-sown grain having been all rooted 

 up and devoui'ed by an army of these " wee cowerin' 

 creepin timorous beasties," formidable not from their in- 

 dividual size, but their numbers. Whole plantations of 

 young trees have in like manner been destroyed, the root 

 of every sa])ling being eaten, or the bottom of the stem 

 barked around. In the years 1813 and 1814 the ravages 

 of these animals in the New Forest and the Forest of 

 Dean were so great as to create an alarm lest the whole 

 of the young trees in those extensive woods should be 

 destroyed by them. In the first vol. of the ' Zool. 

 Journal ' is a letter from Lord Glcnbervie to Sir Joseph 

 Banks, entering into a detailed account of the devasta- 

 tions committed. Mr. Jesse, in his ' Gleanings,' re- 

 ferring to the plantations in these forests, says, that soon 

 after their formation " a sudden and rapid increase of 

 mice took place in them, which threatened the destruc- 

 tion of the whole of the young plants : vast numbers of 

 these were killed, the mice having eaten through the 

 roots of five-year-old oaks and chestnuts, generally just 

 below the surface of the ground. Hollies also, which 

 were five or six feet high, were barked round the bottom, 

 and in some instances the mice had crawled up the tree 

 and were seen feeding on the bark of the upper branches. 

 In the reports made to government on the subject, it ap- 

 peared that the roots had been eaten through wherever 

 they obstructed the runs of the mice." 



Various plans were adopted for their destruction ; and 

 in holes dug purposely to entrap them, in the Dean 



