PROVISIONS AND DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 87 



duced and reared. In front of newly-opened holes the 

 earth, which has been thrown far out, forms smooth 

 hillocks. There were many well-defined and well- 

 trodden paths on the ground, by which the Voles pass 

 from one hole to another. They are never seen out 

 of their holes by day, not even in places where the 

 entire ground is riddled with holes like a sieve. They 

 do not come out in search of food till the evening ; 

 even then not many are to be seen, but the peculiar 

 squeaking noise they make is to be heard everywhere. 

 Next day all sorts of freshly-severed plants are to be 

 found in the holes. Stalks of corn they manipulate 

 by standing on their hind legs and gnawing through 

 the stalk; when this is bitten off they drag it into 

 their holes to devour it there, sometimes making it 

 smaller. They do their work with amazing rapidity. 

 One evening a field was visited which was to be 

 mowed next day, but when the labourers came in the 

 morning they found nothing to cut. The Voles had 

 destroyed the entire crop in a single night. - A miller 

 in the neighbourhood of Velestino reported that he 

 went to his field early one morning, cut a measure of 

 corn, loaded it on his ass, and brought it to his mill. 

 When he returned to his mill with a second load 

 he found scarcely a vestige of the first remaining. 

 Thinking it had been stolen he kept watch for the 

 thief; but suddenly, to his great astonishment, hosts 

 of Voles appeared and set to work to carry off the 

 second load." Such facts as these recorded by 

 Loeffler are by no means a merely recent pheno- 

 menon ; Aristotle was familiar with the devastations 

 of the Voles, and wrote that "some small farmers, 

 having one day observed that their corn was ready 

 for harvest, when they went the following day to cut 



