208 LLOYD'S NATURAL HISTORY. 



several in Ettrick-head and Tema Water were attacked in a 

 greater or less degree, but not to be compared with the first- 

 mentioned six farms. In Nithsdale and Western Dumfries, 

 the parishes of Tynron, Penpont, and Durisdeer were among 

 those that suffered most. 



"For two or three years previous to 1876, the Voles had 

 been observed to be on the increase. In the spring of 1875 

 the ground, which had been covered with snow since Decem- 

 ber, was found to be riddled with holes under the wreath- 

 drifts, and denuded of herbage, by the Voles that had found 

 shelter there. Great numbers were seen throughout the sum- 

 mer, when cutting the bog hay. The shepherd at Craikhope 

 described the children as 'amusing themselves by hunting 

 them from morning to night, as long as they could find nothing 

 better to do, so that each day/ he believes, ' they destroyed 

 hundreds, and the dogs devoured them till they made them- 

 selves sick ! ' In the autumn of the same year they continued 

 plentiful. The farmer of Howpasley, when cutting a four-acre 

 field of corn, observed numbers to be driven inwards by the 

 reaping-machine, so that when only a spot in the centre of about 

 twenty feet by five remained, he made one of the men take a 

 scythe and cut it slowly, a woman lifting behind. The others 

 surrounded them, and killed the Mice as they came out ; and 

 somewhere between eighty and a hundred were thus destroyed, 

 most of which were eaten by six dogs present. ' I used to 

 kill scores of them,' he adds, ' with a stick while walking over 

 the hills/ 



" The same thing was observed, in a greater or less degree, 

 wherever the conditions of the ground were favourable to 

 them. A correspondent to a county paper relates that when 

 1 removing a two-years' crop of hay in the autumn of 1875 from 

 a meadow sloping down to the Bowmont, on the farm of Sour- 

 hope, near Yetholm, two to four nests were found under eveij 



