464 The Plague of Field Mice, by Sir Walter Elliot. 



they have received, albeit not in accordance with the rules of 

 good forestry. 



"Ido not find," observes Sir Robert in conclusion, " that the 

 field mice will eat young trees as long as they can get grass 

 and other natural food, for I have a plantation at present at 

 Ardlarich, in Pannoch, planted in 1871, that is swarming with 

 them quite as numerously as the former ones, and not a tree has 

 yet been touched (1877) because the grass is still plentiful, but 

 should that fail, the tiles are all ready for them." 



It thus appears that the field vole, when pressed, will attack 

 any edible vegetable substance, and it cannot be doubted that 

 under suitable conditions it would be found to be as injurious to 

 the produce of cultivated fields, as it has been to pasturage and 

 woodlands. At the very time when it was proving so trouble- 

 some on the Borders, a closely allied species, the A. arvalis, of 

 Pallas, was devastating the cornfields of Galicia and Hungary to 

 an extent that attracted the notice of the Hungarian Government. 



Some of the reports made to the Minister of Agriculture Trade 

 and Commerce, in 1877,*' have been procured through the late 

 British Consul General at Buda Pesth, but being in the Hun- 

 garian language, their purport has only been partially ascer- 

 tained. As with us, the voles were observed to be gradually on 

 the increase from 1872, and from the same cause, viz., a succes- 

 sion of dry, mild seasons. In 1875 they were very numerous in 

 the Kolozswar district, but it was in 1876 that they swarmed 

 over the cultivated fields in such numbers that the peasants 

 doubted whether they had sprung out of the earth or fallen from 

 the clouds ! They devoured every article of produce whether 

 grain or roots, corn, potatoes, turnips, lucerne. In the autumn 

 of 1876 they attacked "the vineyards, and when other food failed, 

 devoured each other. Finally an epizootic disease broke out 

 among them, which, at the end of 1876, swept them off in 

 thousands. The dead were found to be covered with lice 

 {acari ?) which also infested the bodies of the living to a less de- 

 gree. 



By the spring of 1877 they had entirely disappeared almost as 



* 1 . Report by the Royal Agricultural Institute of Keszthely . 



2. ,, ,, Royal Agricultural College of Kassan. 



3. ,, „ Royal Agricultural College of Kulozs-Monostor, in 



the district of Kolozswar, &c. 



