138 MIGRATION OF RATS. 



ing it we could distinctly hear in the evening at 

 many yards' 1 distance. They were shot by dozens 

 daily ; yet the survivors seemed quite regardless of 

 the noise, the smoke, the deaths, around them. 

 Before the winter, this great herd disappeared, and 

 so entirely evacuated the place, that a few years 

 after I could not obtain a single specimen. They 

 did not disperse, for the animal is seldom found in 

 the neighbourhood, and no dead bodies were ob- 

 served. They had certainly made this place a tem- 

 porary station in their progress from some other ; 

 but how such large companies can change their 

 situations unobserved in their transits is astonishing. 

 Birds can move in high regions and in obscurity, 

 and are not commonly objects of notice; but quad- 

 rupeds can travel only on the ground, and would 

 be regarded with wonder, when in great numbers, 

 by the rudest peasant *. 



* As an event connected with the subject of temporary augmenta- 

 tion and diminution of creatures, I may be pardoned for noting the 

 predominant increase of sex in some years. The most remarkable 

 instance that I remember of late, was in 1825. How far it ex- 

 tended I do not know, but for many miles round us we had in that 

 year scarcely any female calves born. Dairies of forty or fifty 

 cows produced not more than five or six, those of inferior numbers 

 in the same proportion, and the price of female calves for rearing was 

 greatly augmented. In the wild state, an event like this would have 

 considerable influence upon the usual product of some future herd. 

 In the ensuing spring, we had in the village an extraordinary in- 

 stance of fecundity in the sheep afforded us, one farmer having an 

 increase of sixteen lambs from five ewes, four of which produced 

 three each, and one brought forth four ; however, only a small por- 

 tion of these little creatures lived to maturity. 



