THE VOLES 



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especial taste for the bulbs of crocuses and newly-sown peas and beans, among 

 which it frequently does great damage. In winter, when other food is scarce, the 

 field vole will not unfrequently ascend trees to feed upon their bark. It is also by 

 no means averse to a diet of insects and flesh. 



The field vole is an unusually prolific animal, producing from three to four lit- 

 ters in a year, and each litter containing from four to six young. The nest in \vhich 

 these are born is composed of moss and leaves, and is usually placed beneath a tus- 

 sock of grass in some slight hollow in the ground. 



The most remarkable peculiarity in connection with this field vole is the swarms 

 in which it occasionally makes its appearance in various parts of the country. 

 According to Mr. J. E. Harting, one such " mice plague " appeared in 1580 in 

 Essex, a second visited Hampshire and Gloucestershire during 1813-14, while a 





THE CONTINENTAL FIELD VOLE. 

 (Two-thirds natural size.) 



third was recorded in Wensleydale which lasted from 1874 to 1876. In the second of 

 these visitations, upward of thirty thousand voles were destroyed in the Forest of 

 Dean, and eleven thousand five hundred in the New Forest. Quite recently (1892), 

 another such plague has made its appearance in the south of Scotland, especially in 

 parts of Dumfriesshire and Roxburgh; the area over which the voles extended 

 being estimated at from eighty thousand to ninety thousand acres. The mildness 

 of the winter of 189091, coupled with the scarcity of owls, kestrels, and weasels 

 (due to the overzeal of gamekeepers), are supposed to have been the inducing 

 cause of this last visitation. It is reported, however, that, as on similar occasions, 

 numbers of owls arrived in the affected districts for the purpose of preying on the 

 voles, which by the end of 1893 had well-nigh disappeared. 



The habits of the continental field vole are similar to those of the English spe- 

 cies. It is stated, however, to be even a more prolific animal, the number of young 



