1 74 



THE NATURE BOOK 



porarv disturbance of Nature's balance 

 — he multiplies, with amazing swiftness, 

 into a plague. 



THE SHORT-TAILED MEADOW MOUSE 

 FEEDING. 



Plagues of ]\Ieadow ]\Iice (or some closely 

 allied species) date almost from the dawn 

 of history. 



We read in the Septuagint version of 

 I Samuel v\-vi. : "And the hand of the 

 Lord was heavy upon Ashdod, and brought 

 (evil) upon them, and boiled over upon 

 them in their ships, and mice sprang up 

 in the midst of the land .... and 

 the ark was in the field of the strangers 

 seven months, and their land boiled over 

 with mice." 



Herodotus recounts how Sethon, 

 a priest-king of Egypt, was suc- 

 cessful in checking the invasion 

 of Sennacherib, King of Assyria, 

 about 700 B.C. Sethon had im- 

 prudently snubbed the military 

 caste, with the result that, on the 

 appearance of Sennacherib, he 

 found himself without an army. 

 This sent him in great distress to 

 the temple of Hej^haestus. and 

 there he had a vision of the 

 god, who cheered him with a 

 promise that he would find him 

 allies. Relying on this jwrniise 

 he led out a mi.xed force of "shop- 

 keepers, artisans, and loafers " to 

 battle with Sennacherib. 



The Greek te.xt proceeds : 

 " And when they reached that 

 place (Pelusium), Field Mice 

 were poured upon their enemies in 



the night, and they gnawed into their 

 quivers and into their bows, moreover 

 thev gnawed into the hand-straps of their 

 shields, so that when they fled on the mor- 

 row man\' perished for want of weapons. 

 And now this king stands in stone in the 

 temple of Hephaestus, holding a mouse 

 in his hand, and saying, as the inscription 

 shows, ' Whoso looks on me, let him be 

 blessed.' " 



The Greeks would seem to have 

 favoured another deity. " Sminthos " is 

 a word used by .Eschylus for " mouse," 

 and it is possible that Apollo Sminthcus, 

 mentioned in the Iliad, may mean 

 Ai:)ollo the Mouse -killer, or Lord of the 

 Mice. 



We find distinct references to an early 

 mouse-plague in Italy, both in ^Elian and 

 in Diodorus. /Elian's version is : " The 

 incursion of a horde of Field Mice (by the 

 gods no light matter !) drove certain of 

 the people of Italy from their native 

 place, and made exiles of them by ruining 

 their crops and pasturage, just as drought 

 or frost or other inclemency of weather 

 would do — part the mice shaved close to 

 the ground, and part they cut through the 

 roots of." 



It is noticeable that in all these cases 

 the Greek clearly implies that the appear- 

 ance of the mice was sudden as well as 

 overwhelming. This suddenness seems 

 to have been characteristic of mouse- 



THE MEADOW MOUSE'S TUBE. 



The opening has been cleared and the grass on the near side cut 



down to show the arch of the tube above f>round level. 



