362 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO l6gQ. 



will bite it, and hold it so fast, that they may be swung about in the air ; they 

 are fat and thick, and without any tail. In their march they keep a direct line, 

 generally from north-east to south-west, and are innumerable, thousands in 

 each troop, which (or the most part is of a square figure ; they march by night 

 and in the twilight, and lie still by day. The distance of the lines they go in 

 is of some ells, all parallel to each other, so that the places they have gone over 

 look like the furrows in a ploughed field. If they meet any thing that might 

 stop them, they avoid it not, though it were a fire, a deep well, a torrent, lakes, 

 or morass, but without any hesitation venture through, and by that means many 

 thousands of them are destroyed and found dead in waters, and otherwise. If 

 they be met swimming over lakes, and attacked with oars or boat-hooks, they 

 neither retreat, nor offer to run up the oars, &c. but hold on their course, and 

 if forced out of it they presently return to it again ; when they are met in 

 woods or fields and stopped, they set themselves on their hinder feet like a dog, 

 and make a kind of barking or squeaking noise, leaping up as high as a man's 

 knee, defending their line as long as they can ; and if at last they be forced out 

 of it, they creep into holes, and set up a cry sounding like biabb, biabb. They 

 never come into any house, nor meddle with any thing that is food for man ; if 

 a house happen to be in their way, there they stop till they die ; but through a 

 stack of hay or corn they will eat their way ; when they march through a mea- 

 dow they injure it much by eating the roots of grass ; but if they encamp there 

 by day they quite spoil it, and make it look as if it were burnt, or strewed with 

 ashes. The roots of grass, with rotten wood, and the insects in it, are their 

 chief if not only food. These creatures are very fruitful, and bring forth 8 or 

 9 at a time ; yet this does not ainder their march : for some of them have been 

 observed to carry one young one in their mouth, and another on their back. 



It is reported that some poor Laplanders, wanting other food, have killed and 

 eat several of these creatures, and found their flesh like that of squirrels : dogs 

 and cats, when they kill them, eat only the heads, and birds of prey only the 

 heart ; during the winter they lie under the snow, aud have their breathing 

 holes upon the top of it, as hares and other creatures. The common people 

 are very glad of these guests, as they foretell plenty of game, as fowl, squirrels, 

 lo-cats, foxes, &c. 



These mice are the same with those called mures Norwegici, Norway mice, 

 described by Olaus Wormius in his museum. 



On some Plants in Jamaica. Bij Dr. Hans Shane. N°251, p. 113. 



In Jamaica, the neighbouring isles, and on the continent of America, there 

 grow many sorts of misseltoe, parasitical plants, as they are called by some, or 



