4G6 The Plague of Field Mice, by Sir Walter Elliot. 



In Stowe's Chronicle we read that " about Hallontide last past 

 (1581) in the marshes of Danesey Hundred, in a place called 

 South Minster, in the county of Essex, * * * * there sodainlie 

 appeared an infinite number of mice, which overwhelming the 

 whole earth in the said marshes, did sheare and gnaw the grass 

 by the rootes spoyling and tainting the same with their venimous 

 teeth in such sort, that the cattell which grazed thereon were 

 smitten with a murraine, and died thereof ; which vermine by 

 policie of man could not be destroyed, till at the last it came to 

 pass that there flocked together such a number of owles, as all 

 the shire was able to yield, whereby the marsh -holders were 

 shortly delivered from the vexation of the said mice. The like 

 of this was also in Kent." Similar "sore plagues of strange 

 mice" are recorded again in Essex in 1648, and at Hilgay, near 

 Downham Market, in Norfolk, in 1745. 



I will conclude this part of the subject by referring to 

 the oldest mention of voles on record. The earliest is that 

 related in 1st Samuel, v. 6, when the Philistines having 

 carried off the ark of the covenant, were plagued by an 

 epidemic disease, and their fields ravaged by swarms of mice.* 

 The other is the statement of Herodotus (Euterpe, c. 141) 

 of the invasion of Judea and Egypt by Sennacherib King 

 of Assyria, and of the discomfiture of his army when en- 

 camped at Pelusium, on the frontier of the latter country, by 

 swarms of field mice ' ' which pouring in upon the soldiers, de- 

 voured their quivers, bowstrings, and the handles of their 

 shields, so that next day when they fled bereft of their arms, 

 many were slain." The event was commemorated by a statue of 

 Sethon, the Egyptian King in the temple of Yulcan, with a 

 mouse in his hand, which Herodotus himself saw.f 



Canon Tristram, who has investigated the Zoology of Pales- 



* The Hebrew version from which our translation was made, seems to be 

 incomplete at this place, for both the LXX. and the Vulgate read: "And 

 the cities and fields in the midst of that region, produced mice [or burst up, 

 and mice came forth], and there was great confusion and much dearth in the 

 city;" which is confirmed by the 4th, 5th, and 11th verses of the next chapter 

 (vi.) where the Philistines presented expiatory golden images of " the mice 

 that mar the land" when restoring the ark. 



f Cary's Trans. The late George Smith, in the " History of Anct. Assyria 

 from the Monuments," notices at p. 116, the correspondence of this narrative 

 with that of the xxxvii. chap, of Isaiah and ii. Chron. xxxii., 21. 



