CHAPTER VII 



VERMIN 

 By TOM SPEEDY 



THE first essential condition in order to increase a stock 

 of game on an estate is the destruction of vermin. As 

 soon as game begin to increase, vermin will arrive upon 

 the scene, although how and from what quarter they 

 have introduced themselves are among those mysteries 

 in natural history which are as yet unexplained. As 

 bearing somewhat on the subject, it may be mentioned 

 that in a recent visitation of a plague of voles, when 

 these rodents threatened to devastate the pasture-lands 

 in the Border counties, a foreign owl, the short-eared 

 species, which, though an occasional winter visitant to 

 this country, has only on rare occasions been previously 

 known to breed with us in any numbers, congregated 

 in hundreds in the vole-invested districts and nested in 

 the heather. Whence they came in such numbers must 

 ever remain a mystery, but there they suddenly appeared. 

 I have noted a similar coincidence with regard to game. 

 I have introduced hares to an island, where they at first 

 rapidly increased. The eagle and the buzzard soon 

 made their appearance, and nested on the island, when 



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