A BOOM IN ANIMAL LIFE 277 



weed supposed to have been imported from a 

 distance. 



For the next season or two the ' boom ' will 

 probably continue. But the best evidence that this 

 plague of water voles wiJl be combated by a host of 

 natural enemies suddenly rising round them, and, 

 ultimately reduced to natural limits, is contained in 

 the history of the vole plague in Scotland. This 

 is contained in a Blue Book, giving the c Report of 

 the Committee, appointed by the Board of Agricul- 

 ture, to inquire into the plague of field voles in 

 Scotland/ 



This Report is in many ways one of the best 

 works on natural history which has appeared during 

 the last few years. It gives at length, and in admir- 

 able arrangement, the first-hand observations of men 

 who spend their lives on the moors of the Scottish 

 Border -- shepherds, foresters, gamekeepers, farmers 

 and naturalists, often in language as quaint as that 

 of Dandie Dinmont. The whole question of the 

 natural or unnatural increase and decrease of wild 

 animals in a wide district has been the subject of the 

 most careful inquiry and evidence. The numbers, 

 lives and habits of such creatures as weasels, voles, 

 sparrow-hawks, kestrels, stoates, short-eared and other 

 owls, rooks, ravens, rats, rabbits, moles, pheasants, 

 grouse, merlins, hobby s, herons, gulls, foxes, crows, 



