4SO MURID^— AGRESTIS 



a corresponding abundance of beasts and birds of prey, to 

 which (and to dogs) the mice are extremely palatable. These 

 participate in the exceptional fertility of their victims, and for 

 the time being, alter the whole routine of their ordinary breed- 

 ing habits. Later, disease arrives to help in the extermination 

 of the mice, fertility drops to a minimum, the predatory 

 creatures retire or starve, and vegetation resumes its normal 

 aspect ; the "plague" is now over. Such occurrences are now 

 infrequent in Britain,^ but so recently as 1891-93 the grazing 

 lands of southern Scotland were afflicted to an extent involving 



^ Plagues of mice have been known at least from the time of Aristotle 

 {Historia Animalium, vi., 37) and Sennacherib, the defeat of whose army owing to 

 the destruction by night of their quivers, arrows, and bowstrings was described by 

 Herodotus {Euterpe, ii., 141). A fuller account of these and other classical references 

 was given by J. E. Harting {Zoologist, 1893, 187), and see also J. G. Frazer's Golden 

 Bough {cit. supra, p. 374). For Britain there are records of " sore plagues of strange 

 mice," in the following years at least: — 1580-81, "an extreme dripping warm year, 

 and a mild moist winter" (Childrey), in Danesey Hundred, South Minster, Essex 

 (Holinshed's Chronicle, 1315); 1648, Hundred of Rochford and Isle of Foulness, 

 Essex (Childrey, Britannica Baconica, 1660, 14). An anonymous correspondent to 

 the Gentleman's Magazine, 1754, 215, stated that Helgay, near Downham Market, 

 Norfolk, had a plague every six or seven years, at which times long-eared owls arrived 

 regularly to eat the mice, and were venerated almost like the Egyptian ibises. Prior 

 to 181 3, near Bridgwater, Somersetshire (George Montagu, Supplement to the 

 Ornithological Diet., 1813, art. "Owl") ; 1812-14 (commencing in iSioor 181 1), Forest 

 of Dean, Gloucestershire, and New Forest, Hampshire (Lord Glenbervie, Zool. 

 Journ., i., January 1825, 433-44); 1825, oak-coppices of Cameron, Dumbartonshire 

 (Harting, Zoc/<?fzj/, 1892, 121-38); 1836, Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire (Edward 

 Jesse, op. cit. supra, p. 418); 1863-64, Rannoch, Perthshire (Harting, op. cit.); 

 1864-67, woods, Drumlanrig, Dumfriesshire (Harting, op. cit.) ; 1875- (culminating in) 

 76 (ending in May), mainly in portions of Roxburghshire, Selkirkshire, Dumfriesshire, 

 and Yorkshire (Sir Walter Elliot, Proc. Berwickshire Nat. Club, viii., 1876-78, published 

 1879, 447-68, a paper abstracted for the Brit. Assoc, 1878), and following winters 

 of higher than usual temperature, the frosts being slight or accompanied by snow, 

 from February 1871 to January 1876 ; commencing before 1890 and ending before the 

 summer of 1893, Dumfriesshire, Roxburgh, Selkirk, Peebles, Lanark, Kirkcudbright 

 {Government Report on the Plague of Field Voles in Scotland, 1893, 174, reprinted 

 in Zoologist, 1893, 121-38 ; see also P. Adair, Ann. Scott Nat. Hist, 1893, 193- 

 202; VLzxiva^, Zoologist, 1892, 161); simultaneously in 1891-92 a plague in Thessaly 

 {Report cit. axiA. Harting, Zoologist, 1893, 139-45), and in 1891-93 in Norway (Collett). 

 [Plagues are said to have occurred in Essex and Kent in the 17th century, but I have 

 not been able to find the original references.] 



The above are well summarised in the Report cit. supra, as also by R. Lydekker ; 

 and for mouse plagues generally, see A. Fleming, Animal Plagues, Philadelphia, 

 1871 ; V. Bailey, N. Amer. Fauna, No. 25, 116 ; W. H. Hudson, Naturalist in La 

 Plata, ed. 2, 1892, 60-64 ; S. A. Poppe, Ueber die Mduseplage, 1902 (including a 

 bibliography of murine literature) ; S. E. Piper, Year Book, U.S. Department Agri- 

 culture, 1908, 301-S. 



