338 THE LONG-TAILED FIELD MOUSE. 



less than seventeen of them,, of various colours, probably young 

 ones ; and he adds that their general colour was brown, with a 

 white ring about the neck ; the tail likewise tipped with white j 

 and a light coloured stripe down the nose and along the back. 

 The foxes, early in the summer, finding such a supply of food, 

 which they appear to prefer to all others,* ceased from that 

 time to destroy any more lambs ; but sometime in the next 

 spring, the mice having retired, the foxes again fell upon the 

 sheep (the lambs at first) with unwonted fury."f 



In July 1833, a similar irruption of mice occurred in the 

 county of Galway, in Ireland, and did great damage to the 

 crops of grass and corn. In the Times of August 13, 1834, 

 appeared the following extract from a Frankfort journal, " Our 

 fields have been so overrun with mice, that in one commune 

 near twenty thousand of those mischievous little animals have 

 been killed. It is impossible to form an idea of the destruction 

 they commit. No sooner is the harvest over, than they betake 

 themselves to the vineyards, where they make a greater devas- 

 tation than amongst the corn. In an adjoining county there 

 is a race of small black rats, which appear to be multiplying to 

 an equal extent with our mice." Later in the same year, the 

 Morning Herald (October 14) mentioned, that a sudden malady 

 had occurred among the mice in the neighbourhood of Frank- 

 fort, thousands of them being found dead or dying in the fields. 

 " A few years ago, soon after the formation of the new plan- 

 tation made by order of the crown, in the Forest of Dean, 

 Gloucestershire, and in the New Forest, Hampshire, a sudden 

 and rapid increase of mice occurred in them, and threatened 

 destruction to all the young plants. Vast numbers of oaks and 

 chesnuts, five years old, were killed by the mice eating through 



* " I have long known that dogs (and, I think, the shepherds' beyond all 

 others) are particularly fond of the Alpine mouse; and, although I have 

 repeatedly tried, in various quarters, to obtain specimens, it has been in vain, 

 as the shepherds tell me that they only discover them by their dogs, who 

 instantly swallow them." 



f Abridged from Mag. Nat. Hist. (1834), vol. vii. p. 181. 



