136 History of Animal Plagties. 



\the countries in which the epidemic appeared. The birds of 

 passage migrated before their appointed time, and those whose 

 nature it is to build on trees and in elevated situations rested 

 during the night on the ground. Not only did this occur, but 

 animals wjiich fed on herbs and leaves became sickened with 

 their usual food, which seemed to be polluted by some virus in 

 the atmosphere.-^ 



In 1581, says Dr Short, 'at six o'clock in the evening, in 

 April, was an earthquake not far from York, which in some 

 places shook the stones out of the buildings, and made the 

 church bells jingle ; the next night the earth trembled once or 

 twicein Kent, as it did also May the 1st following. November 

 the 1st, in Kent and the marshes of Essex, was a sore plague of 

 strange mice suddenly covering the earth, and gnawing the 

 grass roots ; this poisoned all field herbage, for it raised the 

 plague of murrain among cattle grazing on it. No wit or 

 art of man could destroy these mice, till another strange flight 

 of owls came, and killed them all. A great earthquake in 

 Peru.'^ 



' Salius Diversus. De Febre Pestilente. Francof. 1586, p. 62. 



^ T. Short. Op. cit., vol. |i. p. 267. Stow. Annals. This very unusual 

 irruption of mice in Kent and the marshes of Essex appears to have caused 

 some dismay ; and well it might, for the occurrence must have been as perplex- 

 ing as it was unusual. In other countries, however, this is not so, and the mice 

 or rats, or some cognate species, are noted for their migratory habits ; though 

 perhaps all do not give rise to'a 'plague of murrain,' whatever that may have 

 been. Some notices of these appear in this ' History ; ' a few others are men- 

 tioned as follows. Wrangell, when travelling in the far north of Siberia, speaks 

 of the misfortunes of a native hunter. ' He had expected that his dogs would 

 have been able to subsist during the summer on the mice, which they are in the 

 habit of catching, and had brought with him only as much food for them as he 

 calculated he should require for them on his return. Unfortunately the mice had 

 migrated, and in consequence the greater part of his dogs died.' ' The mice often 

 emigrate in large numbers from one island to another, and sometimes even to the 

 continent of Asia.' — Travels in the North of Siberia, pp. 497, 498. 



Tschudi, for Peru, says : ' Numbers of the mouse family, from the small tree 

 mouse {Drymomys parvithis) to the large, loathsome, spinous rat (Echinomys 

 leptosoma), swarm over all the Montanas, and love to approximate to the dwellings 

 of man. These animals destroy the gathered harvest, and even in these remote 

 regions they become a plague.' — Travels in Peru, p. 424. 



A species of marmot {Lagopus Tibetamis, Hodgson : the ' Kardiepien ' of the 

 Tibetans) sometimes migrates in swarms, like the Lapland lemming, from Tibet, 

 as far as Tungu. — Hooker. Himalayan Journals, vol. ii. p. 93. 



The ermine also, according to Brooke {Travels itt Norway, p. 310), Pontoppi- 



