JANUARY 39 



in the space of half an hour, out of gunshot, but so near 

 that we could hear the sound of their wings in the 

 still air. The number of fish consumed by such a 

 multitude of these destructive birds must be prodigious. 



Ill 



It was among the rank fallows of Thessaly that the 

 plague of field voles took its rise, and, growing The Plague 

 to uncontrollable dimensions, desolated the ofVoles 

 harvests of 1891 and 1892. Simultaneously, a wide 

 pastoral area in southern Scotland was infested by 

 swarms of voles. 



The Thessalian vole (Arvicola Guntheri), though nearly 

 akin to, differs specifically from, the vole with which 

 Scottish farmers are only too well acquainted (Arvicola 

 agrestis). It differs also in habits; for whereas the 

 British vole lives on the surface, and does not burrow, or, 

 at most, scrapes out shallow runs, its Greek congener 

 riddles the banks and fields with innumerable deep holes. 

 At the time of our visit mid-winter the little animals 

 were underground : winter in that country, though short, 

 is a period of much more absolute repose in vegetation 

 than in our long dripping seasons; there is no grass to 

 tempt the voles abroad, and the presence of innumerable 

 buzzards, kites, and kestrels, soaring and hovering over 

 the plain from ' the rising of the morning till the stars 

 appear,' seems to ensure the summary fate of any over- 

 venturesome individual that should emerge. 



The fact that birds of prey exist unmolested in such 

 large numbers over the vole-infected districts of Thessaly 

 has a distinct bearing upon the theory put forward in 



