No. 4.] BIRDS USEFUL TO AGRICULTURE. 45 



murraine and died thereof; which vermiue b}^ policie of man 

 could not be destroyed till at the last it came to pass that 

 there flocked together such a number of owles as all the 

 shire was able to yield, whereby the marsh holders were 

 shortly delivered of the vexation of said mice. The like of 

 this was also in Kent." 



AVhile we may be permitted to doubt the accuracy of the 

 deductions which attributed the cause of the murraine, his- 

 tory has often repeated itself in regard to these outbreaks 

 and their suppression. Similar sore plagues of mice were 

 experienced again in Essex in 1648, in Norfolk in 1745, and 

 they occurred regularly at this time about once in seven 

 years at Helgay near Downham market, but a prodigious 

 flight of "Norway owls" alwaj's appeared and destroyed 

 them. Such outbreaks as these have occurred in difierent 

 parts of the British Isles for centuries, but they have always 

 been checked by the appearance of hawks and owls, until in 

 1892 in the south of Scotland. Then, their natural enemies 

 having become somewhat reduced, they appeared in vast 

 herds over an area of eighty thousand to ninety thousand 

 acres. A preponderance of opinion among the farmers was 

 reported, tracing the cause of this outbreak to a scarcity of 

 owls, hawks and weasels and other so-called vermin. There 

 have been somewhat similar experiences in the United States. 

 In recent years the shooting, trapping and poisoning of car- 

 nivorous animals and rapacious birds in the west has been 

 followed by a tremendous increase in numbers of the prairie 

 hare or " Jack rabbit." These rabbits have become such a 

 nuisance that whole communities have to turn out and drive 

 them into prepared enclosures, where they are clubbed to 

 death. 



Some of you may recall how Dr. B. H. Warren, State 

 ornithologist of Pennsylvania, standing on this platform, once 

 told you of the experience of the people of that State with 

 bounty laws, framed to secure the destruction of crows, 

 hawks, owls, foxes, etc. You will not remember, perhaps, 

 that the difl'ercnt counties of the (commonwealth of Pennsyl- 

 vania paid out of their respective treasuries in one year 

 nearly eighty thousand dollars in bounties on the heads of 

 hawks and owls killed in that State under the so-called scalp 

 act of 1885; that finallvthe stomach contents of three hun- 



